and at the same time they have a high regard for liberty. They merely recognize the fact that there is a point at which the interest of the public and its liberty is bound to conflict with the interest of the individual and _his_ freedom to do as he likes. And we instinctively recognize this, too, just as everybody does. We merely cheat ourselves into thinking that _our_ liberty is something different from French liberty because we have a lot of laws upon our statute books that are there only to be disregarded and would have to be repealed instantly if enforced. Take, for instance, the celebrated provision of the penal laws that the failure of an accused to testify in his own behalf shall not be taken against him. Such a doctrine flies in the face of human nature. If a man sits silent when witnesses under oath accuse him of a crime it is an inevitable inference that he has nothing to say—that no explanation of his would explain. The records show that the vast majority of accused persons who do not avail themselves of the opportunity to testify are _convicted_. Thus, the law which _permits_ a defendant to testify in reality _compels_ him to testify, and a much-invoked doctrine of liberty turns out to be a privilege in name only. In France or America alike a man accused of crime sooner or later has to tell what he knows—or take his medicine. It makes little difference whether he does so under the legalized examination of a “juge d’instruction” in Paris or under the quasi-voluntary interrogations of an assistant district attorney or police inspector in New York. It is six of one and half a dozen of the other if at his trial in France he remains mute under examination or in America refrains from availing himself of the privilege of testifying in his own behalf. Thus, we are reluctantly forced to the conclusion that all human institutions have their limitations, and that, however theoretically perfect a government of laws may be, it must be administered by men whose chief regard will not be the idealization of a theory of liberty so much as an immediate solution of some concrete problem. And, of course, we have known this all along, but instead of doing away with impossible laws we have preferred to have prohibition on Main Street and free liquor at the hotel side doors, closed Sundays on the statute books and a wide-open town in practice, immunity from arrest in theory under cover of the agreeable delusion that America is the freest country in the world, and in reality the same situation that exists in continental countries.