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Newspaper Page Text
think about anything except that the troops pulled you out of a mighty ticklish situatipn just as the natives were closing in on your body, son." "But Sergeant Hutton?" "Ah, poor fellow ! I guess you'll have to know, captain. You had been carrying a corpse from the first. He was hit by a bullet just before you picked him up, and musf have died instantly." THE SAME THING OVER AGAIN Ever since the dawn of civilization well-meaning men and women have been trying to solve the vice problem, and it isn't solved yet It never will be solved until reformers treat the cause instead of try to put a disinfectant on the effect. Human nature hasn't changed materially if at all in several thousand years; Any .student of the bible can learn in the wonder ful stories in that wonderful book, that we have to deal with the same social problems today that they had to deal with then. Right here in Chicago we appear to be no nearer .a solution-of the problem iUian we were before the vice commission made its in vestigation. No other investigation will find more or less, in substance, than the vice commission found. After each investigation makes its revelations, things will settle down in the same old way; just as they settled in the same old way after the flurry was over when Dean Sumner and his associates made their report. It's easy enough get prominent men and women to investi gate, and to report. It's easy enough to stir the police up until they make spectacular raids". It's easy enough to close saloons. But history proves that whatever is done in that regard merely disturbs the surface. The cause itself is not disturbed. Greed and selfishness, two common human failings, have much to do with all the trouble. And the love of money is back of it all. Human society will have to become perfect before we can ex pect its weakest members to become perfect; and Lord knows none of us is perfect. If we actually lived the Golden Rule it would be different. But we don't. ' All the same, those who want to eliminate vice from the world would better start in by trying to establish social and industrial justice. Men and women prefer to live right if they have the chance. We've got to give them the chance. And we might as well understand that we can't turn human be- " ings into angels by state law or village ordinance. Nor can we pound virtue into the human heart with a policeman's club