Page:Scott Nearing - The Germs of War (1916).djvu/6

 returned to the city, to overwhelm the people and to take their children and their loved ones. Some said, "It is a punishment for sin," Others, "It is the will of God." The American men of science came, asked their questions, and set about discovering the answer. "What is yellow fever?" They found that it was a disease that was produced by germs. "Why is yellow fever?" After long study it was discovered that it was carried by the mosquitoes. "How can we destroy the mosquitoes?" A method was found, and since the American occupation of Havana, yellow fever, that had, up to that time, been an annual visitor, has become a stranger to the city. Yellow fever, like every other disease which afflicts civilization, will be destroyed when we find the germs and destroy them.

Find the germs! Discover the causes! Then and only then can you deal with the effects.

Remember the experience of the English-speaking race with its criminal classes. The good Samaritan of the Parable took his man to the hotel, cared for him, and paid his bill. Therein, he showed himself charitable. But was he just? What were the germs of this crime? The injured traveler, like the person stricken with the yellow fever, was the effect. Ask the questions of science, "Who were the criminals?" "Why were they criminals?" "How can crime be prevented?" Pity the effects, but seek out the cause!

For centuries the criminal law of the English-speaking world has been written as though the criminal alone were to blame. The pillory, the dungeon, and the scaffold completed the work begun by the blugeon of the policeman. "Give us enough pillories, dungeons, scaffolds and blugeons" insisted the upholders of the criminal code, "and we will stamp out crime."

Well, did they?

The penalties which the English Code prescribed for criminal offenses, even of the most trivial character, were frightfully severe. Did crime cease? No! Did it diminish? No! What was the reason? The law was trying to abolish a thing that it did not understand.