Increasing Crime in France.
The Paris Economiste Français, which the Literary Digest calls an "undoubtedly reliable and accurate" journal, having made a scientific study of criminal conditions in France, says: The increase of crime is one of the most urgent questions now occupying public attention. Juvenile crime has reached a pitch which rouses the greatest apprehension. The evil has become so crying that the official reports on criminal procedure have never been less optimistic. In the district of Paris the number of murders is steadily on the increase. In ten years crimes of this character have increased in the ratio of 20 to 94. We are told that each year nearly 100,000 crimes remain unpunished. There are in France 400,000 highway robbers, and vagabonds, deserters, and tramps equal in number an army of 70,000 men. Catholic papers say the cause of it is non-religious teaching in the public schools. Others declare that it is due to decadence of the police. Rather its root lies in the depraved human heart, encouraged by the almost entire absence of a high moral standard, and in France this is found in neither Church nor State.