DELINQUENCY
American children between ten and seventeen years are turning to crime five times faster —29% increase since 1948—than the population increase among teen-agers. One million, or 1 out of 18, now have some dealing with the police each year. "Children of school age are stealing automobiles, engaging in armed robberies, setting up gangs, performing acts of violence and vandalism, throwing wild parties in which dope, liquor, and sex are mixed. They stop at no crime-including murder." (U.S. News and World Report, Dec, 11)
And the causes: Fathers and mothers drink and quarrel, and exercise neither care nor discipline. Broken homes are one awful curse. Most delinquents come from homes with no spiritual influence.
The article quoted mentions a strange and leading cause of delinquency, namely, a feel- ing of insecurity and unrest. Behold an amazing object lesson ! There is the best clothed, the best fed the best entertained, and the greatest privileged mass of young people in the world, suffering under a rising crime wave on account of a feeling of unrest, of insecurity, of insta- bility. Has earth then no resting place ? Solomon the Wise said, "I applied my heart unto every work that is done under the sun." Having plumbed all possibilities of wealth, wisdom, pleasure, and power, Solomon at last summarized all fallen life in a sentence, and American youngsters but agree with him, that “all is vanity."
Another strange feature of this report of the crime investigators-investigations were made by the Senate Investigating Committee, as well as by Mr. and Mrs. Glueck of Harvard Law School is that nothing is said about all the falsehood and filth which is being poured into these youngsters through the press, crime comics, radio, movies, TV, and what not. Nor is there the least reference anywhere to that human depravity which, fed and fostered by all the modern sources of filth, cannot but break out in delinquency and crime.
* * * *
Let's think about our India. Are the youngsters of our country turning to that side? God forbid ! Still then to answer this we have innumerable instances. But what is needed at present is an effective remedy for this evil. And that remedy can be had only through the united efforts of the parents, teachers and the religious preceptors.
OUR HOPE
Among those treasures with which we are all endowed by nature, hope stands by itself as being the most precious. Just because hope is so common we accept it as a matter of course, without realizing how precious it is. Without it life in a fallen world would be unbear- able; without it the zest for living would disappear almost at once; without it one hour of adversity would break our spirits and drive millions to suicide. It is not too much to say that if all hope were destroyed within the human breast, the race of mankind would die out al
