captain heard of a projected meeting of five hundred push-cart men. He asked and received permission to address them, with the result that the push-cart men got the basic idea and promised co-operation. Then a policeman evolved another idea.

"The Greek, Yiddish, and Italian newspapers will print something about the cleaning-up rules," he suggested. When they did, he advocated getting them to print circulars in different languages for distribution among the men and to the residents of the foreign quarters. The result has been that the arrests for sanitary code violations have fallen off to the point where they are seldom made, and the city is cleaner in these quarters than it has ever been in recent years.

Commissioner Woods visited an outlying East Side precinct recently, and found it as spick and span as need be. One section particularly attracted him, and he found the patrolman and quizzed him.

"How do you manage to keep these people from throwing things in the street, officer?" he asked.

The policeman grinned.

"It's a game, sir," he confessed. "The kids here are crazy on war. I've got them playing war with the dirt and refuse. If they see an overloaded ash-can they assault it, and carry it, too. Dirt in the street is attacked and overcome just in a minute, Mr. Commissioner."

In General Order No. 48, which sets forth the handling of street cases such as these, Commissioner Woods has written a final paragraph:

"Members of the force observing any violations will take such action as will correct the condition, but will not serve summonses or make summary arrests unless directed to do so by the commanding officer."

And now the Department is tackling twin factors that have troubled the community for years-unemployment and distress. Woods believes his Department has more facilities for this work in the way of aiding the regular departments and organizations for its relief than any other. It has been said time and time again that under the present charity organization system in the city starvation is an impossibility; to which the reply of those who know is, "Piffle !"

During the week beginning November 16, by sheer accident, a patrolman caught a word or two that led him to investigate an adjacent tenement. There he found a mother and

three children nearly dead from starvation, a process that had reached the third day. The family was saved, but it was touch and go. Under the present arrangement every man on the force from the officers down is responsible for the social conditions existing on a street or neighborhood. Unemployment demands attention. The station-house, inspection district center, or Headquarters itself, are, and must be considered, as clearing-houses for information-industrial and social information. Unemployment will be reported by the patrolman and passed along to the bureau that takes care of such matters; destitution will follow the same route. Somewhere in the city there exists an institution or a person that will furnish relief if the case can only be brought to the proper attention. The police will bring the one to the other. Bad sanitary conditions will be traced to their responsible source, and the responsible individual will be shown how these may be corrected. Groups of boys seen to be slipping into bad habits. will be reported to the Young Men's Christian Association or Big Brother Associations, and the policemen will work with these organizations. Physical needs and defections will be handled similarly on the basis of humanity, and not alone on the basis of law infraction and punishment. In fact, any condition which interferes with the well-being and harmony of human kind is police business in a wide and general sense, and it must be taken care of in that spirit. There may be broader and more sympathetic interpretations of what constitutes police business, but they are difficult of discovery, and the present chronicler has not found them. The spirit of the thing brings fruit. Thus :

The Department recognizes that needs arise where immediate action is necessary, where the needy cannot wait for investigation and action later. To this end a system of coupon books has been established, and when a case of destitution is found the first action is to donate a book. These coupons are accepted in lieu of cash at various shops and restaurants, and are redeemable for cash at Headquarters. The traffic squad found out what the Commissioner was doing with coupon books, and begged to be allowed to contribute. It sent in $818; the police surgeons followed with $100. Now the contributions are refused until a way can be found to make them anonymous in a measure, so that no man need be made to think such contribution is morally compulsory. No man

is to be placed in a position where he can imagine any one will think more or less of him if he does or does not contribute to the fund. The measure is one of the "first aids" that are so vitally necessary in dealing with a great city's problems, and it is constructive idealism of the right sort, and human service that is worth while. Let it be understood that at first the idea of contributions from the rank and file of the Department was never contemplated; but when the men found what was going on they asked for the privilege of contributing. Perhaps no group of men are closer to the human side of a city than the police; they see it all, the grave and the gay, the sad and the wicked and the joyous, and they know much about the human being that they have not been able to express with the tools of their trade as they have had to handle them. But they have practical ideas, and in their charity there is nothing of the "carefully iced" variety. It can be had hot off the griddle of a great human sympathy, no matter what people may have thought about the guardians of their peace.

It will be seen that the basic idea in the Department is to get rid of the concept of law as an oppressor, as a wholly negative type of force that is continually crying, "You shall not do this or that," that is waiting as in hiding for the unwary to commit some overt act, and then springing out upon the unfortunate and haling him off to prison, and that is in no sense constructive, but wholly mandatory. To many persons, and particularly the foreign-born population, that is what law stands for a vast machine of menace. The new police idea is wholly different. It aims to do something that in America seems never to have been tried as an angle of police duty to strive for the inculcation of the thought that the law is an engine of mutuality, of good will, of positive influence; that it is constructive. The new police idea is to present it as a protector; to show conclusively that fear as a crime deterrent is seldom, if ever, permanent. The spirit of this is permeating the Department. A man and his wife engaged in quarrels that disturbed the neighborhood and bred other troubles. A new policeman was assigned to this post. The night after his arrival the regular marital uproar began, whereupon the policeman took names, numbers, and details, and went away, for the trouble was of a mild variety and no actual breach of the peace occurred. The next day the policeman picked up the man in

the case, and put the whole matter up to him in a friendly fashion. He took the husband back to his home, explained that he had no authority to interfere yet, but saw that he would have to eventually if the thing went on unchecked, and by his diplomacy succeeded in harmonizing the warring elements to the point where the quarrels ceased.

Of

Obviously these things would not be possible did the ancient System gnaw at the police vitals. That System was a product of corrupt politics, and wherever police power has appeared as a factor in municipal affairs there has appeared the System. It worked along simple lines, but always for the protection of crime, vice, and corruption. To-day, no matter what uninformed persons may say, the New York Department is largely divorced from politics. old the positions were frankly on sale. If a roundsman wanted a sergeantcy, he bought it-if he could raise the money. To-day a political indorsement is just as valuable as a bean-shooter to a candidate for police advancement. Any one who disbelieves this may make inquiry at any political headquarters north or south of Fourteenth Street. And the ward politician can't get police favors. Woods won't grant them, and it costs something to refuse, for some of the political friends of the policemen are plausible and well-meaning. One and all get the same answer-it can't be done. They learn that if they can't get an individual favor the next man can't either, and that satisfies them, for they feel comfortable about it, and it saves them a deal of trouble. Now they've almost entirely stopped asking. They don't have to 66 'go to the front" for a friend or relative or adherent, for good and bad alike, and they light another cigar and smile complacently.

It must not be understood that the New York Police Department is being turned into a few regiments of pedagogues, for that isn't true. Crime is being dealt with in the usual manner when it occurs, and the phases mentioned above are preventive. The nightstick is a palliative measure that has not been abandoned. They are not letting go of this useful hickory utensil until they have something better to take its place down at the Headquarters establishment. The sticks are still hickory, but the heads of the men wielding them are of softer material, and it is quite possible, as Commissioner Woods has proved, to get ideas into them.

W

HEN Japan sent its ultimatum to Germany, statements appeared in various papers in the United States which suggested a suspicion that Japan did not mean what she said except so far as the ultimatum was a notice to Germany to leave the Orient to other Powers not at war with Japan's ally, England.

It must be confessed that when the Minister of Foreign Affairs is reported to say anything before the Diet of Japan that can in any way be made to seem to declare that Japan had made no promises in regard to Kiaochau, such a statement lends color to the oft-repeated assertion made by "yellow journals," and even by those "semi-yellow," and perchance the "blue" ones, that Japan is now going back on the assurances given more than once by her great statesman Count Okuma, that Japan has no intention of territorial possession in China nor in the South Seas.

Recognizing the very great danger lurking in this apparent following of Germany's famous declaration that all promises made between nations when the pinch comes are only scraps of paper," I sought and obtained a conference with Viscount Chinda, the able Ambassador from Japan to the United States.

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In my meeting with Viscount Chinda I was greeted with the same cordiality that I have always experienced, and with the same frankness of statement compatible with his official position, of course. I told him frankly that the reported denial of the Foreign Minister before the Diet had an ugly look and was sure to be very injurious in its influence unless it could be in some way either contradicted or explained. The Ambassador replied: "Baron Kato's statement in the Diet should not be construed as a declaration of intention on the part of the Japanese Government to retain Kiaochau.

It was not an announcement of any future policy, but simply a statement of fact made in reply to a direct question on the subject. The whole question of the ultimate disposition of the captured territory will not, and from the nature of the case cannot, be decided upon before the restoration of general peace. It would be absolutely impossible for any one, including the Imperial Government themselves, to give in any wise or manner an assurance as to the final disposition of the captured territory."

Then he remarked that the statement to the effect that the Embassy had contradicted this denial was incorrect-that no one had any authority for making such a counter-statement.

I confess that my spirits went down at this apparent confirmation of what seemed bad faith to some, and I remonstrated that people would not accept that explanation, but would feel either disturbed or confirmed in their suspicion that the Japanese Government was no better than the average tricky tradesman. To this there was no reply except a smile.

If I had not had some experience in the Japanese ways of getting at a thing, I should have considered the interview closed, and have come away with my own confidence a bit shaken up, but not shaken, for I have had too much proof of the absolute fidelity with which public pledges have been kept to be easily shaken out of my confidence in the Japanese Government's integrity. So I waited, and, sure enough, the added remarks came, not exactly as I was looking for them, but so put that in the end they have been entirely satisfactory to me, and I believe fair-minded Americans will rest content in them as I did and do. With great earnestness he said: "But remember that the articles of our alliance with Great Britain stand." At first I did not fully grasp the significance of this simple reply, for he added: