A PERVERTED ARIEL

To the newspaper category of master minds of the criminal world have been added more alluring terms. Recently, the press has christened a cake-eater bandit, a maniac murderer, and a radio burglar. In this manner is modern crime dally dramatized for the sake of sensation and presented to an eager public. The tendency is not new in journalism, but rarely before has it reached such artistic culmination. The confessions of "cake-eater" bandits do not usually find a place on the front page of The New York Times.

And in the very name of radio burglar lurks romance. In reading of his mysterious murders to obtain receiving sets, one gets the uncanny impression that he materializes out of the ether and enters by way of the aerial.

Writing in the first flush of excitement, a reporter apparently can secure effects comparable to these of Poe's compendium of sudden death. Thus crime presents an attractive exterior quite concealing the sordidness beneath.

Fortunately, the master myth on which the later legends are based is being somewhat allayed by contradictory publicity. In the third-grade of an elementary prison school, two men heralded by the press as master minds are for the first time becoming proficient in the three "R's". After this denouement, people may even believe that the radio burglar is not a sprite akin to static, but only a moron in need of a shave