In that fine book of Mr. Holmes', entitled _London's Underworld_, is an account of how hooligans are made. The young men are full of energy--they want exercise, struggle, the fight of the football field or the hockey match, and they cannot get it. They have no playground but the streets and no outlet for their energy save hooliganism. The pity of it! What, then, causes crime? It is never the wish for crime. It is one of two causes. Either it is the only outlet for some natural instinct which is denied legitimate outlet by the environment, or it is due to an inability to resist temptation when it offers. How can it be prevented? Now this inability is physical. The wish is spiritual--the ability is physical and depends greatly on health. With ill-health or malnutrition in the young the first thing to give is the power of control. The average of criminals are a stone underweight. Therefore, crime is dependent to a great extent on health. Ill-health causes crime; accidental mutilation causes crime; accident creates an aptitude to crime; neglected youth and education cause crime. Religion does not affect crime one way or another. The greatest criminals are often religious. Mediæval Europe was very religious and very criminal, and there are many other instances. Honesty is inborn in all; it is part of the "light that lighteth every man that is born into this world"; it requires no teaching. What must be acquired is the ability to give effect to it. Crime is a physical, not a spiritual disease. And crime is no defect of the individual. It is a disease of the nation--nay, of humanity--exhibited in individuals. You have gout in your toe, but it is your whole system that is wrong. This disease can be cured by Humanity alone. Criminals are those whom we should pity, should prevent, should isolate, and, if possible, cure. Remember what John Bradford said, looking on a man going to be hanged: "But for the grace of God there goes John Bradford." He, too, would have been the same had he had bad training in his youth. We have all of us within us instincts which rightly directed result in good, which in default of outlet we can be trained to control, but which without outlet and without the receipt of training may result in crime. Crime is, therefore, a defect of training and environment, not of personality. CHAPTER XVI COURTS REFORM But, pending any such great change as must come in all penal law when the subject has been carefully studied, there are many smaller amendments that might be made both in Civil and Revenue Courts and Law. The pressing need in Criminal Procedure is, I think, a change in the treatment of an accused person when he is arrested.