Americans themselves are, and almost always have been, less law-abiding than the more civilized European nations. Living much in England, I have already had frequent occasion to note the startling difference which one feels with respect to the public attitude toward law in that country and in our own. No one can be there without feeling this difference, but lest my own insistence upon it be set down to prejudice, let me quote the opinion of Dr. Kirchwey, head of the Department of Criminology in the New York School of Social Work, formerly Dean of the Columbia Law School, and one-time Warden of Sing Sing Prison. “Our visitor to London,” he writes, “will have heard much of the low crime rate of that great city, of the efficiency of the unarmed police, of the swift and sure administration of criminal laws. Let him look further and note the ingrained habit of law-observance of every class of the population from the man in the street to the judge on the bench. He will find no attempt made to violate the restrictive laws governing the sale of liquor, whether by licensed vendor or by the customer; rarely a violation of traffic regulations by cabmen or private driver ... he will not discover a trace of the sporting spirit which leads his fellow-citizens of the American commonwealth to laugh at the escape of a daring criminal from[Pg 103] the legal consequences of his guilt. And, if he cares to pursue his studies further, he will find on the other side of the English Channel still other communities where, as in England, a low crime rate is set against a background of an all but universal sentiment of respect for law and order.” How is it that we in America to-day are without the pale of this respect for law which is one of the fundamentals of civilization? In seeking an answer we obviously cannot confine ourselves to the present decade, but must dig deep into the past. Only parts of the appalling record that we shall find, when we do so, can be touched upon here. Respect for law is a plant of slow growth. If, for centuries, laws have been reasonably sound, and impartially and surely enforced by the lawful authorities, respect for law as law will increase. If, on the other hand, laws are unreasonable or go counter to the habits and desires of large parts of the population, and are not enforced equitably or surely, respect for law will decrease. On the whole, the first supposition applies to the history of England for three hundred years and the second one to our own. II