Contrast the announcement of the Law Enforcement League with this official declaration. Said this League, composed of the pastors of churches and law-abiding people, "Chicago's influence ought to be on the side of purity and good order, but the fact is that vice and crime are prevalent, lawlessness is defiant, recreancy to sworn duty is all but universal. The disorderly saloon is the nesting place of the terrible debaucheries which disgrace our city. Ordinances and laws which have for their object the suppression of venality and crime are trampled ruthlessly beneath the feet of a disloyal and un-American horde. * * * The public mind is profoundly agitated over the reign of lawlessness and moral disorder. * * * The co-operation of all decent and respectable people is absolutely imperative if municipal government is to be transferred from the baser to the better element. * * * We have a right to demand that lawlessness shall cease; that gang rule shall be broken; that partisan politics shall be made subsidiary to municipal righteousness; that the all but omnipotent power of the disorderly shall be broken; that the carnival of crime which curses Chicago shall end; that the law breakers, crime makers and bribe-takers shall be adequately punished and that the fair name of this imperial city shall be redeemed from the reproach of blackmail, wanton immorality and widespread disorder." A noted divine said recently, "I believe that this city is to be the greatest city of this continent and of the world. I believe that Chicago is the devil's headquarters, and I think it is not far from the City Hall. If our own eyes could be fully opened we would see there infinite indecencies, bum politicians, ward workers, heel tappers, men who are the devil's own and delivered body and soul to do his bidding." Another said, "Saloons and all other haunts of vice are wide open, as they have never been before in the city's history." A distinguished lawyer, speaking before the Christian Convention recently held in this city, said, "Scourge off and out of your temples the political hyenas that prey on the municipal body politic, that fatten on the scarlet woman's wages of sin, that share the gambler's plunder and the blind pig's profits." Another eminent divine declared at this meeting, "He knew that men have been kept from coming to, and investing in, Chicago because our morality is so low." Still another divine declared at the same meeting, "But when in one night five homes in the block in which I live--and I moved there because it was the safest place in the city--are robbed, and, within the same week, three men are held up within two blocks, the conditions are serious." Serious, indeed, they are, despite assurances of protection by the police force emanating from the highest official authority!