Let us begin at the beginning, for what I am about to describe may happen to any one. When a man is arrested the police proceed as follows: Invariably starting with protestations of sympathy and faith in their prisoner’s innocence, they make offers of help and assistance. The suspect is coaxed into a confession if possible; this is the first degree. Let us further suppose that, on his part, all guilt or knowledge is denied. Then the second degree is “worked.” Here traps will be laid for him—he will be lied to, threatened, frightened, it may be. A lawyer may now appear. He says an agonized mother has retained him to take the case; he guarantees immediate release, and is ready to hear the story. But suppose the “agonized mother” to have been dead many years, naturally his services are declined. It is well. The confidence would have been extended to a policeman. I have heard that a cassock sometimes robes the same individual on a similar errand. This “moral suasion” may be extended over even a day or two, reinforced by such pleasantries as being awakened the moment one drops asleep. Meals are “forgotten,” a drink of water is an impossibility; or liquor is plied if that will open lips. In summer a cheerful fire may burn very near the cell door; the windows are closed, one may perspire a trifle. If the season be winter, no inconvenience is felt by reason of superfluous heat. This is not denied by police officials. I believe Superintendent Byrnes describes all these methods in his book, and tells how a suspect is locked up in a cell with the instruments of the crime he is accused of having committed, or even with the “corpus delicti” itself. Proof of this method is found in that atrociously and hideously managed persecution of a young woman, in which evidence collected in this manner was offered in court—and very properly ruled out by the presiding judge. The case is too recent to be forgotten. If the prisoner still remains obstinate, the third degree follows in due course. This is not at all the bloody affair which some fancies have painted it. The appearance of those who have just gone through the ordeal indicates nothing unusual—perhaps a little pallor and a slight derangement of the digestive organs; for to be struck in the stomach with a lusty fist enclosed within a boxing glove or beaten across the kidneys with a piece of rubber garden hose leaves no marks, that is, on the _outside_. No right-minded person who has experienced this will ever complain to the courts; he has no witnesses; “there is more in the closet.” I believe that the “third degree” is very seldom used unless there is almost a moral certainty that the person subjected to it is the proper one to receive this modern torture.