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many other concerns it is thorough-
ly understood and practiced; in
for example,
athletic training,
where a little is done each day.

Let us start the New Year then, by deeply thinking over our old habits, recognizing how enslaved we are by them, and how much more freedom and enjoyment we should have without them, and contemplating the advantages arising seen in from the new habits as

men who have them. Having thus acquired a deep conviction of the need for reform, let us determine to keep that conviction alive all the year by constant meditation on it. Then let us resolve to begin wisely, methodically, and calmly; being content with a little, but never going back on that little. In this way we may begin to discover new life in the old maxim about New Year resolutions.

The Rosenberg Case - A Fateful Decision

JANUARY 11 is the deadline for possible commutation of the death sentence of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. To millions of fellow-Americans, outraged over exposed perfidy in high places, the legal killing of two convicted traitors will seem an expiation in some slight measure for the crimes against the country. The possibility of thousands of young Americans being slaughtered on foreign soil as the result of treasonable acts, rouses the just wrath and condemnation of the most complacent citizen.

Law, precedent and public opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, it must be seriously asked whether the slaying of this couple will be a good thing. Will the gain compensate for the loss? What will be the immediate and lasting effects at home and abroad? This is weighing a very big subject on

the smallest scales of practicality.

The death of the Rosenbergs will satisfy those who adhere to an ancient code, an eye for an eye, a code which has been outgrown and repudiated widely in the United States. It will give comfort to nonstudents of crime statistics who believe it will prove a deterrent to similar acts. It may seem to justify much futile investigation of treason in public office.

On the other hand, this supposed exercise of justice, in smaller degree, can place us in the class of Communist-controlled Czechoslova kia, which has so recently killed off a dozen condemned "traitors."

Criminologists and prison wardens repeat again and again that the death chamber does not check crime, but we go on with a kind of medieval fanaticism, dispensing

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justice with lethal gas, electricity and the rope. Is it for nothing that keen students and far-seeing legislators have adopted more sensible and scientific methods to meet the problem of crime? How backward can we be and still be progressive?

As told in the December issue of New Outlook, Michigan abolished capital punishment in 1847, and it has since been done away with in Maine, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. It is worth repeating that homicides are fewer in these

states, as they have become in Sweden, Denmark and Italy, where the death penalty has been abolished. Most of South and Central America and ten European nations have embraced literally the scriptural adjuration "Thou shalt not kill." But America, claiming to be most humane and charitable of nations, exacts its pound of flesh.

Here is no attempt to impugn the verdict of a court acting in protection of national and civic interest, nor inference that a Jewish judge may have been sensitive to criticism because the defendants were of Jewish origin. Nor are these words to be taken in amelioration of treason or to disparage resistance to Communism. Nor do they plead mistaken zeal or extenuating circumstances, in that the information on atomic fission given by the accused was not passed to

an enemy but to an ally, in that year. But they are a serious warning that this too severe penalty of death, as exercised in the present case, may help fasten a stigma to our jurisprudence and give far more comfort than dismay to our enemies.

Never yet in the United States has a civilian been executed for treason in time of peace, and to establish such a precedent ultimately may confound progressive initiative with malign acts, exacting punishments too drastic and opposed to our ideals of our republic. Canada, most akin to us among all nations, has recently punished treason by imprisonment, not for life, but for terms reasonably commensurate with the adjudged acts of guilt.

It took centuries for England to realize that public hangings did not prevent murder and stealing. We have learned something about imitative acts of violence as we grope about to eradicate the causes for crime. But as long as we emblazon reform with the picture of the death chamber our progress will be exceedingly fitful and limited.

The Rosenberg case may or may not become a historic byword. It is for wise and experienced heads to decide. It may revive a perennial and scathing Sacco-Vanzetti protest by radical groups, or time, the great healer, can obliberate an epi

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sode now magnified by the contemporary fears and investigations. There will be those able to see this as an opportunity to raise a standard for the Iron Curtain, whereby justice is upheld in less futile and archaic fashion than by the slaying of the guilty. And there are those who feel that taking the lives of the two parents, even if guilty as charged, not only will greatly publicize the ineptness of government, but will make martyrs of the man and woman.

CLEMENCY A POWER FOR GOOD

the people have been lifted as by a message from Galilee. The framers of the Constitution seemed to understand that there were times when it is better to err in dishumaneness and violate the sacredpensing justice than to disregard ness of human life.

As we go to press Christmas eve, and realize that with all the tinsel and trappings the mighty impulse of good will to men is being felt throughout the world, and that the things men die for, such as individual freedom and religious faith, can never be substituted worthily, it is to share the hope that this spirit carry on through the months ahead. A fateful decision at the executive mansion in Washington is now to be made, by which justice, tempered with wisdom and mercy, is seen to invoke its infallible reward, or, without these attributes, to deny its birth

Aware of the difficult decisions made in the name of justice, the founders of our republic placed final responsibility for judgment. in appealed cases in the hands of the president. War time chronicles include immortal stories of executive clemency, where forgiveness is exalted as a power for good, transcending iron law and the verdict of juries, and the hearts of right.

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SPIRITUAL AND DIVINE powers lie dormant in every human being, and the wider the sweep of his spiritual vision, the mightier will be the God within him. "Christ, the life, is the light of man, and shineth in the darkness of the soul of man, but the darkness comprehends it not, for man loves darkness rather than light."-H. P. Blavatsky

What Makes People Prejudiced?

Arnold Rose

Professor of Sociology of the University of Minnesota

PREJUDICE of one group of people against another group has existed in most parts of the world and at all periods of history. It has been a major source of unhappiness.

People have different theories as to what constitutes the psychological basis of prejudice. Some of the theories have been disproved by scientific studies by psychologists and sociologists, yet are still believed by many people.

One such idea is that prejudice arises instinctively against people who are different. This may be called the "dislike of differences" theory. Some people say they dislike Negroes because Negroes are so black and dirty, or because they are dangerous. Others say they do not dislike Negroes, but that you cannot treat a Negro as you can a white man, because a Negro is like a child or an animal and cannot act like a man.

There are several things wrong with the dislike of differences

theory:

1. It does not explain the stereotyping that goes with prejudice. Many Negroes are no more dan

gerous or dirty than many white men. Most Negroes are not even black, and a few are so lightskinned that they can pass as whites. Even if the prejudiced person maintains that most Negroes have these undesirable traits, he will admit that there are exceptions. Yet he is prejudiced against the exceptions too.

2. There are a lot of differences against which there is no prejudice. And there are many places in the world where people of different races and religions live together without prejudice. Red hair is just as striking a characteristic as dark skin, and yet few people have prejudice against people with red hair.

3. The dislike of differences theory does not explain the fact that prejudiced people make contradictory statements about those against whom they are prejudiced. Prejudiced people say they dislike Jews because the latter are "always trying to push themselves into places where they are not wanted," and also because "Jews are clannish and keep to themselves." Prejudiced people observe

that "Negroes have no ambition," and yet they are the first to strike down a Negro who tries to secure an education or a better job.

Another largely fallacious theory of prejudice is that it is caused by unpleasant experiences with members of minority groups. It is true that a bad experience with a person can make one dislike that person ever afterward. But why should the dislike be turned to all people with the same color of skin or the same accent? If a fat person does harm to someone, one does not forever thereafter hate all fat people. If one has a quarrel with a member of the Baptist Church, one does not feel the need to fight all Baptists.

One of the most important steps in understanding prejudice was taken when the psychologists developed the "frustration-aggression" theory. In simpler language this is called the "scapegoat" theory. Studies of human behavior have shown that some people are steadily prevented from doing the things they want to do and are consequently not happy. This is called "frustration." Then they are likely to strike at something or try to make someone else unhappy. That is, they become "aggressive." When, as often happens, a person cannot hit back at the thing that makes him unhappy, he finds a substitute.

Everyone uses a scapegoat. Little harm is done if the scapegoat is not a living creature, but sometimes a man will beat a dog or a child, not so much because of what the dog or child did as because the man is angry about something else. One who is reprimanded by his employer will sometimes come home and pick a fight with his wife. He cannot talk back to his employer, so he vents his anger upon his wife. The dog, the child, and the wife are scapegoats, and they suffer because they are scapegoats

Occasionally a whole group of people, perhaps a whole country, feels frustrated by bad economic conditions, unemployment, low pay, as many Americans in the Southern states have been for a long time. Or they may feel frus trated by failure to become the leading nation of the world, as the Germans were after losing the First World War. Nothing they do seems to bring prosperity or glory to their land, and so they take it out on a scapegoat.

One thing that helped Hitler to power in Germany was his ability to persuade the German people that the Jews were the cause of all their troubles. In South Africa politicians are sometimes elected to office after a campaign devoted merely to raising white people's fears about Negroes.

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