Wherever a reform is attacked by the clergy on moral grounds the usefulness of this work is appreciable. In Pittsburgh, Pa., the secretary of a Socialist group was debating with a prominent Presbyterian minister, when the preacher incautiously asserted that Socialism would break up the home, and paraded the horrible example of a Socialist professor who had been divorced by his wife. The proponent of Socialism, expressing his regrets that so irrelevant a matter had been brought into the argument, produced a copy of "Crimes of Preachers" to show how the home had fared at the hands of men of his opponent's profession. Incidentals to the downfall of the preachers are sometimes dramatic. One exhorted his congregation to confession and repentance, whereupon his contrite landlady, much moved, made public the fact that she had been living with him in adultery, and asked for prayers. Another, having worked his hearers to the proper condition, said: "Let us all lay our sins upon the altar." A young woman with an infant in her arms came forward and, handing him the baby, said: "Here's yours." It appeared that he was the father of the child, though not married to the mother. Reference has been made to the papal decree, which of late years has shown renewed capacity for mischief, protecting a priest from prosecution by any Catholic without a bishop or other superior's consent. It is a survival of the "benefit of clergy" law under which the church claimed the right to try the cases of clerical offenders, instead of letting them go before the civil courts. The working of this decree was illustrated in New York recently when a priest attempted an immoral act with an eight or ten-year-old girl. The mother of the girl, unmindful of the prohibition, reported the case to the police, and caused the lecherous clergyman's arrest, but later, having been advised by one of the higher clergy of the diocese, withdrew the charge and declined to testify against the accused, who appears to have been liberated after a reprimand by the court. It must be obvious that with this rule in force, all but the most serious offenses of the Catholic clergy will escape public notice. When in 1913 the murder of Anna Aumuller had been traced to the Rev. Hans Schmidt, a priest of a New York church, the police arrested and the courts convicted the reverend criminal; yet the Rev. Hans Schmidt had committed other crimes previous to this, and was known by his Catholic acquaintances to be a man of immoral life. He enjoyed, however, the benefit of clergy, and was protected by it from the exposure that would have come earlier but for the Catholic ban on "scandal," and that would not have come at all but for his sensational crime. With this wall of secrecy thrown about the priestly life, we know not what immoralities and crimes take place among the clergy and never come to light. While this edition of "Crimes of Preachers" is in preparation a Chicago Catholic priest,