_American Criminology._ Tendencies in this country in the problems of the treatment of the criminal have been overwhelmingly administrative rather than analytical and academic. Our foreign guests in 1910 often remarked that we characteristically experimented and did things rather than debated and philosophized on the theories of criminology. The extravagance of sole adhesion to the former method is increasingly obvious, however, and has led, among other things, to the organization of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, a central body for the inculcation of more scientific methods for the treatment of the delinquent as well as for the extension of our knowledge of the criminal. A recent conference in New York City on the reform of the criminal law and procedure indicated the wide-spread belief of the ablest members of the bench and bar that our criminal law and its administration need radical reforms. In the fields of criminal statistics, also, we need far more light even if such light shall only indicate clearly that comprehensive and accurate criminal statistics are practically impossible to collate. To the efforts of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology to advance in accuracy, in dignity, and in usefulness our store of information as to crime and its treatment, the national conference should give full credit and strong encouragement. THE SUPPRESSION OF MORAL DEFECTIVES Abstract of Address of Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University The prevention of crime through the isolation or extirpation of criminals offers many analogies to the prevention of disease by the isolation or death of diseased persons. These analogies are obvious, and are based on observed facts and not on any theory that all moral defects originate in, or are caused by physical defects. Opinions might differ widely concerning the bodily origin of drunkenness, inordinate sexual passion, or kleptomania; and yet persons holding different views on this point might agree as to the wisest treatment in practice of such moral delinquents. Let us compare society’s treatment of moral defectives with its best treatment of physical defectives. In the first place, a large proportion of the crimes committed in our country are not treated socially at all, the criminals escaping detection and arrest, or being acquitted when brought to trial through the ingenious use of legal technicalities and delays. This is as if victims of scarlet fever or smallpox should be left quite free to move about in the community so far as their condition permitted, society manifesting no active interest in their welfare and taking no precautions whatever against the spread of their disease.