1959-09-16 — Page 4

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THE CHINA MAIL, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 1959..

One man's worry: René MacColl reporting-dateline New York...

City demands 'End teenage terror'

New York.

MAN with a nasty

problem on his hands is Stephen P. Kennedy, New York's Police Commissioner.

The weird wave of teenage violence which has plagued this city of almost 10,000,000 people since the war, culminated the other week in the aimless killing of three youths and a girl in public parks and play- grounds.

New Yorkers are a fairly callous lot and the constant of repetition

of news

violence normally leaves them quite cold.

Bat this time everyone seems aroused. Editorials are sprouting on all sides in the newspapers. Sermons are thundering from the pulpits.

And a torrent of ques- dions, admonitions, and un- sought advice is descending on the head of the hand some, grey-haired Mr Ken nedy.

Dapper

I called on him in his air conted office in the police headquarters building down on Centre Street,

He has a light voice and

Mul a deliberate manner. ling each question over.

well-cut He was dapper in dark blue suit, his grizzled hair was brushed just sn and his friendly eyes peered through guld-rimmed spectacles

like:

But he vertainly looked a man whe is very much in the of a splintering row Imiddle ("Seems like everyone's been heckling

he of late," mc remarked good-humouredly as i sat down on the far side of a vast desk).

RECENT HEADLINES IN THE CHINA MAIL

Trenagers Stabbed

To Drath

Brushed

Against

Seventeen-Year-Old 'Dracuta'

Youth—

Killed

has continued to swell not only statistically bat in the clelous- ness and horror cinnatied.

incidents, he went on,

smoke thoughtfully

of the deeds wards.

Kennedy has refully gares showing that 1,000 youths under 2 have been arrested this year alone. For the under-16's 15 per cent up an

arrests were last year.

all

blowing celling

New York, Bop, A.

chouder, bebyfaced

Znager wat charged

detik

boys and girls make up less that three per cent of the juvenile population of this city.

"Out of 1,200,000 kids, round "The avalanche of juvenile nz

into per cent never get 10.773 issucit crime-up from

arrests trouble.

"But see what can buppen! of under-21's in 1953 to 18,760

alon you get a small, lawless gang in in 1959 in New York

com- an otherwise respectable neigh has brought misery munities right across the land. bourhood. Sooner or later the robberies, sex attacks, assaults, together in self-defence. Inevit-

L

"The recent scourge of street other children are going to band

follow

and

catlsos?

as

Mobilising

Picking up one phones before him the commis-

JAR

"Heaven be praised.... There hasn't been any good shooting around here since the British loft."

-London Express Sérules)

Astonishingly, I feel

INDIA-a member state of the Commonwealth,

though hitherto she has let the obligations of membership sit very lightly on her shoulders is now in the throes of the gravest crisis she has experienced since her attainment of independence just over 12 years ago.

It is both an external and an internal crisis; it is a personal and

of the tele-moral, as well as a political, crisis. Its melodrams and excitement can sioner talked to somebody about very easily spill over his newly announced mobilien- tion of 1.400 extra police (he into tragedy. commands a total 24,000)

murder, and other carnage by ably vlojence will The blame

YOURA Criminais demands a gread is a eliain reaction." Kennedy amex it

reappraisal of the ugly reality

The brutal "public apathy" "You see," he which is juvenile crime."

The commis- said, "this series of

threw up his hands. unters we have just witnessed siener "They

jus are

about Las temporarily ciranolksed

Kumerous and as interacting as continuing situation.

In any other form of human "Everyone is up in arms about activity.

four it suddenly, because the

V certainly plays its part. each other's After all, it is bound to if the deaths came. heels and were su spectacular. children keep seeing vlofcuee But watch the public will soon on their screens at home, enough slak back once again into its unani apathy.

lie it another cigarette.

Parents' role

for

Wagner and Governor Rocke

duty near the parks and play- It never occurred to me grounds which have become the that I should find it in my settings for horror and violence. | heart to pity Jawaharlal

Meanwidle the city's Mayor Nehru. But pity

him I do his crisis feller have got into the act too. now, for this is

The Governor announcer: even more deeply and ter- "The effort has got to be made.ribly than it in his We cannot rest. I'm deeply con- corned, both a Governor

and try's.

1 parent. We must nobiliso."

There is deep interest in crime. "Parents and neighbours can heaven knows," he went on, help a lot by telling the police "People Uke reading about it beforehand. If they have reason or watching it on TV, but when to believe that their childery it comes to taking some action may be going to the bad. to oppose they are all strictly no use waiting until after it has

happened. non-starters."

Kennedy criticised the attitude run-of-the-mill New at the Yorker towards the police force, Into heroes

Brave words. But the ulti SHATTERED mate responsibility la Kennedy's,

scums

coun-

"All this is not something you I left him sitting there at his can shrug of and just hope that big desk brooding on a problem

A close on 70 he sees the i will go away by itself. Please that

insoluble the beliefs on which he has founded remember that although this is ghastly problem of 1950.

years of work brutally shattered. a national problem-yes, and an

The problem of knives wielded with all his faults, Nehru Is International one, for I know by children in the asphalt liberal idealis!--one of the

survivors of a tradition in which

to

all

you have some of these problems jungle. right there ‘in London-the bud

-London Express Service),

men

"The public approach crime and punishment is

They ought to be far wrong, more eager to furnish the police. with information and help the police to do their job. They should help policemen who are making arrests, instead of inter-

Kennedy announced a year or sn back that there had been far too much mollycoddling of young evil-doers. Ile did not fering with them, as they often

think very much of psychiatrists and do-gooders who had been trying to induce the young criminals to change their ways by kindness.

In future, he hinted, the men on the beat would be instructed to use their night-sticks (trun- cheuns) rather more freely.

But the results have not been encouraging. The crime

do.

"They tend to make heroes of and to Fuccessful criminale applaud them when they escupe the law. That goes for the young criminals too.

"All in all, the New York and public tends to give uid

to the спету and comfort overly to help him as much as possible."

It was no se regarding the four latest killings as wave

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BRITISH PAVILION

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"They're limbering up for some contest in Britain,

I believe."

VICE

DRIVEN

UNDER GROUND

"I don't know- work for the Metropolitan Water Beard,"

JUNIOR RANKS' CLUB

"A char and a wad ? India or China char and. would you like the wad a la carte or table d'hote P

Winston as diverse. as Churchill, Jan Masaryk and David Ben-Gurion were brød,

pity for Nehru today

NEBRU-Burdened,

disaster.

By JOHN CONNELL

and outlook of the old British-

led Indian Army, in particular

and

resourceful India's armed intelligent For forces have inherited and squadron leader in the Indian worthily sustained the traditions Air Force in, 1943/44.

These an are falihful and concentration on military honourable servants of their If Menon drove them efficiency and a total detachment country.

to the brink of resignation, ho from politics.

showed himself Irresponsible India's and contemptuous, of interests.

BRAVE

But in the three Service chiefs he has mure then met his match.

with

I have acquaintance

no

the

Commander-in-Chief.

himself

and Nehru India would be well ald of him,

Will Nehru survive the crisis? Once again surprise myself by He is the personal hoping that he will.

naval only man who can-in spite of

But all the angry criticism that has now bath the soldier and the been levelled at him-unite and airman. General Thimayya. Hold India to face the challenge

h's which.

Won

Не

He has continued to believe, mitice (a respectable ofce, I who has now withdrawn

it seems, the Chinese through all kinds of disillusion- may say, in which I myself was resignation, is a highly capable, are determined to mount. mont, in the ultimately civilised his successor a year or two brave and resolute officer.

the DSO as a battalion And there is, In this time of standards of human behaviour, later) Minister of Defence.

commander in the Fourteenth tension, one gleam of hope on as applicable to politics.

It was true that Menon and Army in Burma, and Field the horizon. The visit pali io

by recently

General He is, however, though greally made more than enough mis- Marslia! Auchinleck appointed Delhi superior in Intellect, much nearer chief in the diplomaile spliere, him to lead the Indian con- Ayub Khan, the President of In character to Neville Chamber when he was Minister without tingent in the Allied occupation Pakistan, was far more than a lain than to Winston Churchill, Portfolio, at the time of Suez forces In Japan 14 years ago.

three years ago.

Air Marshal He trusted the Chinese Com-

But to give this man authority mmunist leaders, as Chamberlain over defence was bourd to bring remember as trusted, Hitler. He has gone on trusting them and trying to appease them,

of not out timidity, for he is:

man brave to the edge of recklessness, but for reasons very similar to those of Chamberlain 20 years ago,

PLIGHT

1

His policy of appeasement, like Chamberlain's on this very day I 1939 lies now in utter ruins. Lico Chamberlain, Nehru is a proud man. And in what is happening now there is | the classically tragic element;

the sight of

proud man humbled.

But his plight is even worse than Chamberlain's, Chamber- lain merely had es his closest colleagues and advisers 1 Eggle of mediocrities and well- meaning boobles. Nehru saddled himself for too long with Krishna Menon.

The personal crisis of Nehra's personal relationship with Kelstrun Menon is loextrlaubty tangled with the political and diplomatic crisis of Chinced aggression over India's frontiers. Nehru's loyalty to Krishna Menon was founded in emotions which ore for from contemp- tible, and he has been almost herole in his malutenance of that loyalty.

But it was also rooted in a fantastic misjudgment of human cimracter.

The scenes in Parliament in Delhi suggest that the character of Krishna Menon has been at long last nakedly exposed to his fellow-countrymmı. Ho lo one of the most bitterly warped men. who ever rose to a position or great power and responsibilty supposedly democratic

in

country.

Nehru made the present crisia Inevitable when he appointed this former chairman of the St Pancras Borough Library› Com-

Mukerjee

1

a young, highly

call; it was a mere courtesy clear sign that the two countries recognise theis common danger.

-Lmaon Express Service),

EXPERIMENT IN CO-

KÍSTENCE

Kweli Capgrijka by strengental with the Alaudente Overstims