News from Chicago indicates a rebirth of that soft and mealy-mouthed generosity which characterizes the American attitude toward crime. Perhaps the brevity of American indignation, the sole reason for every crime wave, results from a sympathetic feeling for the underdog, even after the public has been severely bitten by it, or perhaps this indifference stems from mere lack of intestinal fortitude.

Mr. Dillinger, we hear, was loudly applauded when his frank and honest face appeared on the screen of a Chicago cinema. Never having seen the Robin Hood in this tough of the prairies, this maudlin applause seems quite out of place; almost as much as a lynching itself. If Chicago audiences want to cheer the underdog, let them do it heartily, but it would be better to get him first, and prove that he is the underdog. At present he is probably motoring through the Middle West, spraying the corn and the farmers with his automatic exterminator.

Even better evidence that the Chicagoans have not got the courage of their convictions on the question of good and evil is the sympathetic atmosphere which surrounds the "boy who made good." The crowd which has long clamored for the return and quick imprisonment of its runaway utilities magnate, has failed to re-elect the State's attorney who brought him back. There was certainly no triumphal return, with Samuel Insull dragging behind a chariot, nor was there an angry crowd at the station or the jail. The general notion is that Mr. Insull is a poor, infirm old fugitive whom the law is making into a scapegoat. Pity wells up all over the Windy City. Yet it was Chicago, not the law, which made the man poor by driving him away from his pile, which made him infirm by hounding him rather crudely in half a dozen European courts. The search for legal evidence of his guilt as an embezzler seems to have been a difficult task, but it was done at the insistence of the Chicago citizenry.

The romance of "dragging the pageant of a bleading heart across Europe," will out with Shelley and Byron. Here is the simple case of an elderly utilities man and holding company magnet who "hit for the boiler" when things began to get to warm. For all the court intrigues,Greek women, tramp steamers, (but not even an airplane) it is evident that Insull himself is not a romantic person, such as some old Stuart Pretender or Confederate General. It is probable that the sympathy which he is getting in Chicago marks the surfeit of investigations, mud-slinging threats, and big-banker circuses to which the country has been treated since the beginning of the reform administration.