This is the darker side of the picture of practical government. It is needless to say that the police do not usually suggest the various safeguards and privileges which the law accords to defendants thus arrested, but the writer is free to confess that, save in exceptional cases, he believes the rigors of the so-called third degree to be greatly exaggerated. Frequently in dealing with rough men rough methods are used, but considering the multitude of offenders, and the thousands of police officers, none of whom have been trained in a school of gentleness, it is surprising that severer treatment is not met with on the part of those who run foul of the criminal law. The ordinary “cop” tries to do his duty as effectively as he can. With the average citizen gruffness and roughness go a long way in the assertion of authority. Policemen cannot have the manners of dancing-masters. The writer is not quarrelling with the conduct of police officers. On the contrary, the point he is trying to make is that in the task of policing a big city, the rights of the individual must indubitably suffer to a certain extent if the rights of the multitude are to be properly protected. We can make too much of small injustices and petty incivilities. Police business is not gentle business. The officers are trying to prevent you and me from being knocked on the head some dark night or from being chloroformed in our beds. Ten thousand men are trying to do a thirty-thousand-man job. The struggle to keep the peace and put down crime is a hard one anywhere. It requires a strong arm that cannot show too punctilious a regard for theoretical rights when prompt decisions have to be made and equally prompt action taken. The thieves and gun men have got to be driven out. Suspicious characters have got to be locked up. Somehow or other a record must be kept of professional criminals and persons likely to be active in law-breaking. These are necessities in every civilized country. They are necessities here. Society employs the same methods of self-protection the world over. No one presumes a person charged with crime to be innocent, either in Delhi, Pekin, Moscow, or New York. Under proper circumstances we believe him guilty. When he comes to be tried the jury consider the evidence, and if they are pretty sure he is guilty they convict him. The doctrine of reasonable doubt is almost as much of a fiction as that of the presumption of innocence. From the time a man is arrested until arraignment he is quizzed and interrogated with a view to inducing him to admit his offence or give some evidence that may help convict him. Logically, why _should_ not a person charged with a crime be obliged to give what explanation he can of the affair? Why _should_ he have the privilege of silence? Doesn’t he owe a duty to the public the same as any other witness? If he is innocent he has nothing to fear; if he is guilty—away with him! The French have no false ideas about such things