p. 11 | The Innocent Criminal by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jul 22, 1913

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 28.

The Innocent Criminal.

By Editor

In the editorial section of a recent Sunday issue of one of the great dailies there is an illustration that is supposed to represent the personification of crime. Then an editorial writer uses up two or three columns of space seeking to show that in reality there is no such thing as criminality, that the man we call a criminal is really a man who needs some kind of repair. It is stated that—

“he is simply a human machine out of order.” “Nobody speaks of such a thing as a criminal automobile, or a criminal flying-machine, or a criminal driving-wheel. Yet often the automobile, when the steering gear breaks, kills more than any criminal; and the flying-machine, when a rod snaps, or the engine gives out, kills its freight; and the big driving-wheel in the factory, when it bursts, may kill hundreds.”

The sophistry of comparing a human being, that has brains and will-power, to some part of a machine that may get out of order, ought to be apparent to most thinking people. There are very few criminals but that take the course of criminality from choice, or by the exercise of will. In some instances, as in the case of children that are taught criminality by their parents or guardians, the will may not be exercised at first by the child, and he is driven into those conditions by the force of wills older than his own. In such cases the older person is morally responsible for the crimes and sins that the child commits. But to say that all of the crimes that are committed are to be charged to a human machine’s simply getting out of order is nonsense. This editorial writer seeks to call upon our sympathies for the criminal, and to say that we should not learn to hate him, but should regard him with pity.

There may be truth in such sentiments as these, if they are expressed by an individual who is viewing matters from the correct standpoint. Truly no Christian man will ever hate anybody. Christ teaches us plainly that we should “love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Matt. 5:44. So really there is no room for hatred in the heart of a person who stands upon the broad platform of Christianity. But on the other hand, this Christian individual will have the keenest sense of the fact that there are thousands of persons in this world who are wilfully choosing to go wrong. There is no use in trying to cover up the wrong-doings of men and women by sophistries. If such a doctrine were true, we should not have penitentiaries, or any other kind of punishments for criminalities. We should have hospitals in which these criminals would be placed for treatment.

A little while ago, there were a great many men who were claiming that surgical operations, by taking away certain portions of the brain, would relieve some of these who were criminally inclined, and make honest citizens out of them. But authoritative statements from great medical men are to the effect that they are not getting the results from this work that they had fondly hoped. The trouble with the people on this sin-cursed planet is that they have gone wrong, and they are seeking all kinds of make-shifts to get around the fact that we are wilful sinners. No doubt the one who penned those editorial paragraphs, and tried in the way he did to excuse criminality, can call to mind many things in his own life that he has done that are wrong, and he knows perfectly well that if he had chosen he could have gone in a different course. We should not be so carried away with speculation that we fail to recognize real fact.

Latest photograph of our new ambassador to Italy, Thomas Nelson Page, the well-known author. The Italian government has accepted Mr. Page as persona grata. The Italian ambassador in Washington gave a state dinner in his honor. We must not confound him with Walter H. Page, ambassador to England.

The Rev. Dr. Henry Van Dyke, of Princeton, well known as poet and author, the new ambassador to Holland. President Wilson has been highly commended, by journals of both great parties, for the selection of scholars and literary men as ambassadors.