THE KING’S BUSINESS 585 devilish work. We are still moving in the, same incredibly silly atmosphere as that which the Apostle describes to his young disciples; there are the same stupid patches of opinions as those against which Paul utters his warning. Not a word need go. The dislike of sound doctrine; itching ears,- and teachers after the desires of our own hearts: fables and babblings, and tattlings; those who creep into mansions and take captive silly women ever learning and never arriving at the'truth. All this is amaz ingly true and up to date; it all stands. So, too, the Apostle’s remark on the vain talkers and frauds overthrowing whole families and teaching evil things for the sake of, filthy lucre. Now, as then, the mouths of such need to be stopt—for we are back in the same ugly underworld of unhealthy influences. Anything odd, preposterous, novel, gains its audience. Each one has a seance, a sophy, and an ism of his own. The medium never had such a harvest before. Black your face and dub yourself ‘Messiah’ and the crowds come in; paint an atheism and it gets believed.”
A number of times during the last two years and more we have had occasion to speak of the demoral- izing effects of war. We are constantly hearing of how much war does to develop the better side of
The Demoralizing Effects of War.
human nature that many of us are likely to be misled if we do not know the real facts in the case. We haVe written already as to the effect of the war upon the young in England, but a book of Dr. Albert Hellwig on “The War and Crime Among th,e Young,” shows similar results in Germany. It shows that in the city of Berlin in 1915 there were twice as many crimes ambng the young as in 1914. In the city of Munich in the first three mohths of *1916 it is said that the number of young criminals equaled the total of •1914. From Stuttgart there came information that crime had increased very considerably among those of school age. Frankfort reported a decrease of fifty-five per cent, of minor offenses but an increase of forty per cent, in serious crimes. As an illustration of these crimes it is recorded that a servant girl aged fifteen was tried by court martial at Griefswald and was sentenced to three years for setting fire to a granary. Two youths in Potsdam weft convicted of waylaying a beer-wagon and battering the driver stenseless with his own beer bottles. In Munich a boy of nine, years of age killed his sister by cutting her throat. At Oels in Silesia a boy of seventeen in December, 1915, hearing that a Woman, whose husband was in the army, had sold her horse and had the money at home, went to the house, stole the money and murdered three children who witnessed the theft. During his arrest and trial which followed it is said that he did not show the slightest regret for the crime. In Berlin a girl killed her sister with a kitchen knife in order to steal her savings. In Hamburg two girls, aged seventeen and fifteen, entered a dwelling house and murdered a woman and stole what they could find. These are only specimen crimes. To anyone who has known German life, especially among the young, in years past, and the strictness with which they were reared, watched and governed, .it is evident that the demoralization which has come through the war is appall ing. Undoubtedly this development of savagery is in part due to the deification of hate that has been so manifest in much of the- recent German poetry, essays, orations and sermons. Many of the better class of Germans, wakened to ’the perils attendant upon this inculcation of hate and it was urged that the schools should be employed to spread better influences. It is surprising ,to find that this agitation for the suppression of this attempt to spread hate called forth a decree from the Prussian Government on January 15, 1916, as follows:
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