"I read an editorial in the paper recently, with regard to murder and the record per city," said Miss Latham. "I see that the south leads. And this town and Effingham seem to struggle for the lead of them all. It was not decided as to which had the most, but it stated that more people were murdered in either one of them than in any other city in the world, regardless of population." "And that is not all. In both of these cities, no data is kept of the number the police kill. I know policemen personally, and see them on duty, who have killed as many as half a dozen Negroes." "Oh, be merciful!" she cried. "Can this really be so?" "It _is_ so," he maintained. "Why last week I stopped a few days in Effingham on the way from Attalia, and read on the front page of one of the leading papers, and which was accompanied by a cut, that an old policeman, who had seen twenty-five years on the force, and who had recently been made a captain, had never killed a man. It was this fact, obviously, that was the most extraordinary." "Cannot the city government do more toward the suppression of so much crime?" she asked, forgetting to eat her breakfast. "They cannot to any great extent, because it is the task of society. The very foundation upon which this crime rests, is due to ignorance on the part of the masses. You cannot reason with a mind that has no training. Have you ever seen it that way?" he asked, more serious now than she had ever seen him before, notwithstanding he was a serious person. She nodded. "No one can, the law of the land cannot. It all falls right back on society." He was too serious now for a time to say anything, and he ate his meal with his face contracted in serious thought. Presently he said: "I am a minister of the gospel, and have the highest regard for the Presbyterian faith; but, honestly, when I see the Baptists with their loose system, keeping the black population that make up their body, and with little, almost no effort whatever toward the education of the children, and when I see still further, the Methodists with their better system, in that they are not held back so much by 'splitters,' I sometimes regret that the world took Martin Luther seriously. For, say what they will, the conduct of the Catholics in regard to the children, marriage and divorce, has an encouraging result in our civic life." "I believe that if there were a Christian movement here as there is in the northern cities, Y.M.C.A. and libraries, and if those who are leaders of the race would encourage the patronage of these places, eventually, it would result to the public's good," she said, after some thought.