Foreign News: England on Legs

All over England common folk and their betters discussed “Legs” last week as familiarly as though he had been shot in London’s smart West End.

The three bullets fired into Gangster Jack (“Legs”) Diamond while his chorus girl splashed in their Manhattan bathtub (TIME, Oct. 20) received far more space in British dailies and weekly reviews than all four of President Herbert Hoover’s recent speeches combined. “After all,” cried the Manchester Guardian, No. 1 Liberal daily, “the most important thing of all is to be civilized. . . . The fate of a Jack Diamond is without significance in itself but the social attitude toward him is significant of much. . . . Here is a perfect illustration of the fallacy that a nation or city is civilized because it has wealth, law courts, colleges and libraries. . . .

“All the machinery of law exists in America, but the thing does not work properly. It does not work properly because the public conscience does not function as it should. Though gangsters are an inconsiderable proportion of the whole population in America, they carry on their activities unchecked, and the only reason for that can be that at the bottom the public does not mind them, does not feel what they do is wrong. You cannot blame the police in such a case. The police are merely the instruments whereby the public sense of what is right or wrong expresses itself. . . .” Neither of the “Press Peers,” Baron Beaverbrook and Viscount Rothermere, cares a hoot for “Civilization.” The Daily Express (Beaverbrook) merely hung upon Legs a second screaming series of articles about “American desperadoes” (the first series was hung on the shooting of Alfred [“Jake”] Lingle in Chicago—TIME, June 16 et seq.). Meanwhile the Daily Mail (Rothermere) hired Edgar Wallace, No.1 British crime fictioneer, to write: “I have been out-Wallaced by recent factual happenings in the United States.

. . . There has been a conspiracy between Chicago and New York to put me out of business by providing thrillers more bizarre and stories less credible than my play On The Spot.” When a young London shoemaker, one Arthur Cox, was hailed into Old Bailey for shooting at two bobbies (whom he missed), the Magistrate showed himself Legs-conscious. After sentencing Shoemaker Cox to ten years’ penal servitude for “shooting with intent to do grievous bodily harm,” Mr. Justice Wright said: “It would be an unfortunate thing for this country if the use of firearms became common. I feel it the duty of this court to visit such conduct as the prisoner’s with condign punishment. I hope the sentence will have some effect in deterring others from carrying loaded revolvers when pursuing their vocation of burglary.” (London bobbies, pursuing their vocations, do not ordinarily carry firearms.) Gouty peers, ruffling through the London Evening Standard learned last week that: “Gunmen have struck terror into the hearts of inhabitants of the big American cities . . . their police are helpless.” Finally, at the other end of the social scale, the Daily Herald, organ of reigning British Labor, explained Legs and his like wholly in terms of Prohibition. “Bad laws may breed lawlessness,” said the Herald.

“Clearly the evasion of the Prohibition law has become an amusing pastime for many American citizens and blackmailing a murderous and highly profitable business for the bootlegger. These are grave social consequences—of what? Of a law that seems to go against the grain.” Four London adolescents caught stealing motorcars from a warehouse which they had “broken and entered” pleaded in court last week: “We only did what Legs Diamond did and he always got off.” Because of their youth and innocence the four were let off on parole after being severely lectured.

In Germany, whence Gangster Diamond was recently expelled, local events were so much more exciting last week (see below) that he was only second string news.

Only John Bull and Dame France, who refused to admit Legs, seemed thrillingly titillated last week by the thought that a real U. S. racketeer had almost been in their midst.