Father's Foundations

If British innkeepers put pistols under their pillows when U. S. tourists are in their inns this summer, the fault will be Mr. Collinson Owen's. Collinson Owen spent three months in the U. S. last year viewing the country rapidly and with alarm. He wrote a book published last week under the title King Crime (Henry Holt, $2.50), which contained the following thoughts:

"The handsome, grey-haired American who is staying at the Savoy Hotel, London, with his smart wife and charming daughter--well, his foundations may easily be knee-deep in the mire of the underworld. What is more, he may be only vaguely aware that this really matters. . . . King Crime is enthroned, and his influence extends over the whole vast country, but checking very abruptly at the Canadian border and not flowing over even into Mexico. ... A criminal army of 1,000,000 persons is operating in the United States and 25,000 gangsters alone have died by gunfire since Prohibition came in.

"Our [i. e. Britain's] murderers are for the most part made up of poor devils who in some way have succumbed to the stress of life. ... In the United States the ebb of the Prohibition tide might even cause a situation far more desperate than its flow. You cannot throw some thousands of well-armed and ruthless criminals out of profitable employment with impunity.

"The American churches and chapels who so largely brought about Prohibition find themselves on the horns of a terrible dilemma. Or, rather, they would be so finding themselves if they had any conscience in the matter."

At least one Britisher who was prepared last week to believe every word of Mr. Owen's book, was T. Philip Perkins, one-time (1928) British amateur golf champion. On the eve of his final match in the Dixie Amateur, he attended Miami's Embassy Club, a gambling casino. While some local policemen were enjoying a light supper in the kitchen, bandits entered the casino for a holdup. Golfer Perkins was shot in the left thigh. The bandit leader was killed, several other persons wounded.

"The robbers," said Mr. Perkins, who has spent considerable time in the U. S., "looked like a bunch of flustered palookas."

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