Liquor, Explosives, and Crime
By Editor
A TWENTY-THREE year old murderer, in confessing his crime to the district attorney, in the presence of his parents, stated that he had gone to see the man he killed about a business matter in which they were mutually interested. To be sociable, they drank some liquor. Then they got into an argument, and the young man killed his friend. Had it not been for the liquor, his friend would still be living, and the young man would not be suffering the tortures of remorse that are worse than death. It is the thousands of incidents of this kind that testify against the liquor traffic and condemn it to a well deserved destruction. THE French, it is claimed, have invented a new explosive bomb of greater power than anything hitherto used. We might hope that progress in the devising of more death-dealing implements had come to an end; but every day adds some new terrors to the already terrible implements that have been created for the destruction of life and property. A DISPATCH from Los Angeles tells of a young woman who held up a merchant at the point of a revolver and took from him $125 in cash. The world is afflicted enough by men who go into the hold-up line of criminality. It is to be hoped that we may be saved from encountering women in the same field of evil activities. THE enforcement of prohibitory laws in West Virginia has reduced the number of arrests in that state fully one half; and if the liquor interests did not insist on violating the law by running "blind tigers," the records would show a reduction in crime of almost three fourths.