The Daily Alaska Empire

Crime Threat Ahead
(Cincinnati Enquirer)

Most postwar planning has been of a roseate nature, dealing with new comforts and conveniences. But there is other postwar planning, of a much grimer nature, which clamors for attention.

Of late there has been some debate whether or not World War II will be followed by a breakdown of law and morals comparable to the postwar era of a generation ago. When the pendulum finally swung back from the era of war rigors and deprivation it led, in a matter of a decade, to crime on a scale unprecedented in the United States. During the twenties, we had the flappers and the "flaming youth," with immorality reaching its highest peak since the founding of America. And then came gangsterism, which went unchecked until it controlled most every major city in the United States.

Much of this, of course, may have been coincidental. The existence of prohibition certainly was a major factor in the spread of gangsterism and in the spawning of "flaming youth" in the speakeasies and the moonshine hideaways. The thing we noted during the twenties may have happened had there been no war—had we adopted prohibition in peacetime, and surrounded it with the years of relative prosperity which the nation experienced up until the stock market crash sounded the knell of economic good times. It cannot be dismissed as an entire coincidence, however, that the flappers and their brothers were the generation largely forgotten about, so far as home guidance was concerned, during the war, and that some veterans of World War I turned to crime. Although, when we say the latter, we are constrained to observe that the typical gangster of the late 1920's was a different animal, usually, from the war veteran.

The problems of youth guidance and veteran rehabilitation which we faced after the last war seem child's play compared with those now developing. We were scarcely immersed in World War I when it ended; this time we already have been fighting for three years and the end is not yet in sight. The rupture of home life has been much more severe. In World War I we did not have anything like the number of women working in plants and factories. Today the number of men called to the Army is several times what it was in 1917 and 1918. There is even less comparison in the type of training: the Army men of today are much more proficient at violence and killing.

We do not think there will be any widespread use of these grim talents. The average soldier, provided he was a stable individual when he entered service, will blend into civilian life again without a ripple of disturbance—provided, once more, he has a decent opportunity to reestablish himself in civilian life. The so-called "GI Bill of Rights" is intended to assure him that, although the over-all economic situation of the nation will determine the long-range opportunities of the returning veterans.

But there will be some men with criminal tendencies worsened by Army service. Add to them the products of our presently flourishing juvenile delinquency. And count in the stresses and strains of a severe economic readjustment, with millions of men returning from the Army and millions more people now working in war plants being forced to look for new jobs.

It adds up to perhaps the gravest public crime threat the nation has ever faced. And whether the threat materializes or not depends upon the wisdom and energy with which we cope with its causes and effects beforehand.