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THURSDAY, AUmur 19, 1937.
SOVIET PURGES
The continued purges which are reported from Moscow sug- gest that to keep the Red Army and State free from traitorous elements has now become a whole-time job. History cer- tainly does not provide any exact parallel to these wholesale Clearly, and trials. arrests there is either much rottenness in the Soviet system, or else on keeping his Stalin is bent hold on the Government, cost what it may. The truth may, in fact. lie in both the one cir- cunstance and the other. Cer- tainly the crimes for which
batches of! these successive officials are accused. and to which they usually plead guilty, are about as black as they coubi be.
not only They involve efforts to undermine the Soviet system, but also betrayal of the its enemies. If the nation to crimes have heen of this en- ormity, the traitors certainly deserve the full rigour of the law. Many of the betrayers who, at intervals of increasing frequency, come up to pay the penalty, have stood high in the councils of the State. The ideal form of governance which Lenin and Trotsky sought to set up has certainly failed to command its due share of allegiance. Plotting to seize power is con- stantly going on. That is an old story in the history of the human race, but the Russian purges are more in keeping with the Middle Ages than with the modern world-which Russia's enemies will doubtless advance
ON TOP OF THE UNDERWORLD
N the capitals of Europe now key-men of the world's police forces are pondering the results of the most suc- cessful international conferenco for a long time.
It was, of course, a conference on crime: 'but.com- paratively honest crime, not the sort that breeds non-interven- tion committers.
And these men, far from agreeing on how not (officially, at any rate) to intervene, have planned very definite Intervention In the war waged con- stantly by the unseen army of the under- world.
We, in our OWN world, are an odd lot. Since 1872 We have
buen participating in International Prison Conferences: evolving Ingenious systems of cellular planning, of remission
ΟΙ scales. grading the criminal CLASSON,
But I was not until 1924 that it occurred to us that it might also be useful to organise an International Police Commission: to plan
how to catch the crooks to All those prisons, and. more im- portant, how to prevent the prisons being filled.
Before then we were content with loose contacts between the world's police forces: contacts frequently so ineffective that they helped the criminals rather than the men trying to catch them.
Now, thank goodness, after 13 Hears of the International Police Commission, all that is gone for ever, Loose contacts have been converted into tight organisa- Lion. Casual help given by a friendly police chief now is rc- placed by an entirely new tech- nique of international co-opera- tion.
*
A brief telephone call from Paris or New York to Whitehall 1212 put the whole organisa- tion of Sotland Yard at the disposal of the Paris Sûreté or the New York State police.
It's idle to deny that there is something dramatic about all this. Lord Peter Wimsey and
by S. E. R. Wynne
The police forces of the world are getting well on top of the criminal.
Ellery Queen are, perhaps, a step or two ahead of the more prosaic policemen who Inhabit gloomy Government buildings.
*
The professional detective Is He is seldom a Philo Vance.
bald, sometimes frequently portly, occasionally even pon- derous. He seldom uses high- powered motor-cars and never the gleaming white yachts com- mon to the best detective Action.
But he seems to get there just the same.
One of them, no more astute than dozens of his fellows, dis- covered the other day-that a group of forgers was putting out thousands of faked bonds through widely spread financial
Overhaul
"it's just a habit with him,"
houses of extremely doubtful origin.
That same morning the long- distance telephone lines be- tween Italy, Switzerland, Bel- glum and France were busier than usual.
And within twenty-four" hours the forgers' gang was broken up: seven of its mem- bers arrested in Milan, three more caught in Brussels.
That case was not excep- tlonal-or handled particularly rapidly.
*
The Belgian police a week or so ago asked Berlin to wireless the description of a wanted counterfelter. The request was made at three o'clock in the afternoon. By eleven o'clock the Belgians had been told that
Your Habits
Next time you are dressing, notice have to make their work a habit to How often do we say it, imply- whether you have to stop to think be indulged in for a certaih perlod ing that we don't think much of the how to knot a tle, or which arm you every day. Unless they did so they particular foible that occasioned the will put first in your jacket. You could not hope to make a living, how- will find that you have unconsciously ever much they were blessed with remorici
the made such a habit of dressing in a genius. The tendency is to associute
The most famous exumplu of an word "habit" with something repre-rerak way that to change wound hensible, or at least with the dull and entail considerable mental and phy-habitual writer was Anthony Trol- lope, the novelist. Employed as u asleal labour. of life. Actually, routine tasks
A habit most of us would do well Civil Servant during the day, he made large part of our lives is based onj
to overhaul is that of getting up ina habit of writing a certain quota of habit.
or fell never exceciled This being so, it is a good plan to the morning. The majority who go words after his ordinary work was
or business have to rush done. le overhaul our habits now and then to work It would show us how large a part through breakfast and hurry to the short of the totul he set himself, with habit plays, and it would also help us station or bus, fearful the whole time the result that he was one of the
most prolific writers. to form new habits that would make that we shall be late. If we made u life flow more smoothly.
habit of rising five minutes carller,
There are some
and rush.
We ent largely as a matter of habit. come very strong, we take meals at become so much o
It might be argued against that regular intervals. But this habit of part of our behaviour that we cali
habit that it would result in getting eating can become a bad one when them "second nature."
to the station or bus stop too early, we eat without thinking what we are As tiny children we had to learn to and there would be nothing to do, eating, and settle down walk, to put one foot deliberately in
would
Doctors to-day are trying to make front of the other. To-day, if we had leve the cultivation of another habit imaginative diet.
of thinking be useful. to stop and think every time we wont-
Either Ignore your surroundings us cultivate the habit ed to take a step, lite would be in-
and read your newspaper, or carry a about our food so that we eat only
do
us good. tolerable. We should never have pocket edition of one of those books what is going to
with i Modern life brings it the need time
to think of anything else.
you have "always meant to read."
as an argument in favour of¡ trivial, that haves, seemingly we should be saved all that worry! Without waiting for hunger to be-
it
So
to an un-
their theory that her civilisation lags far behind the times. We hear many boasts about the power of the Russian Army and Air Force. Russia's enemies, however, will ask themselves how far the vast system she has set up in a short time would respond efficiently to the chal- With so much enge of war, dissension, scheming, and tren- chery behind the scenes, there
Man is naturally a lazy animal who might well be a colossal collapse constant evidence of discord
wants a slack time. Most of us have A good many of us find that letters, in a much shorter period than and disunity in high places. the habit of work forced on us by bills, and receipts accumulate, form- Since the Soviet regime was having to attend omees, shops, or facing an untidy mass in which we can It only it took the Tsarist armies to
forics, and work so many hours a day,never find anything we want. established; It has undergone But there are others whose work de- most of us made a habit of setting collapse in the Great War. This
many changes. How long it will pends upon themselves,
oside half an hour a week to sorting can, of course, be only a matter
Nobody fixes the hours of work for and answering them, we should save for speculation, but the thought be able to continue in being on
authors, artists, or musicians. They ourselves a great deal of worry, and Inevitably obtrudes itself when its present basis time alone will all have the natural Hiking for a life our wives a great deal of annoyance.
(Continued on Page 5.) of ease, and to overcome this they contemplation is given to the' tell,
is with a hundred other things that by reading a few pages whenever for several habits. Looking both We do
every day.
you have a spure moment, you will ways before crossing a roud, switch- On getting up in the morning, we be surprised to find how much it ing off the current before replacing electric light bulbs or mending elec are guided by habil. We do not stop amounts to in a year.
to think whether we shall wash, or I know a man who bas read the trle irons are instances of this. shave, or have a bath, or whether we whole of Gibbon's "Decline and Foll" shall have breakfast before doing any in that way. Now he is more than habits. Good of these. We just do things in the half-way through the "Illid." same order because it is our habit.
Motoring, too, has brought its onca make a good driver; bad ones bring their owner Into the Police Court.
Working And Eating Making Up Your Mind
the man they wanted was under lock and key-and had actually been arrested in Austria!
And this does not happen just now and then. Since the Inter- national Police Commission was established, no
than fewer 100,000 cases have been handled inter- nationally: petty cases some of them, cer- tainly, the criminals addicted to no worse than passport faking ог the passing of "bouncing cheques.
But there are other cases, too: the kind that curdle our bloodt in thrillers and gang- ster Alms - murders and shootings, jewel robberies and bank hold-ups.
For
those sinister
gangs of International crooks really do exist outside the imagina- tion of romantic novelists; but they don't exist for so long since the world's policemen got to- gether.
And there are still enough of them to 11 the Black List of thic International Commission with the case histories of hundreds of thousands of public enemies, to Add to that Black List 300 or so new names every year.,
The Black List is not the one subject of discussion at the annual meetings of the Com- mission, though it takes much of their time. If you could see the agenda (you can't, because everything is quite properly kept time secret) you would see allowed for debates on drug tramckers, white slavers, laws governing extradition, the re- patriation of allen ex-prisoners, after-care, juvenile crime.
*
*
*
You see, they're always willing to learn; and sometimes they have unusual lessons.
In Jugoslavia, where 90 of Europe's ace detectives were meeting for their annual con- ference, there was once an un- which incident rehearsed -taught them just how little they
really knew.
The morning session of tho conference over, they went out. into the market place of Sera- jevo, bought odd trinkets as souvenirs, walked back to their hotel for lunch.
And back in their hotel they discovered that nearly every man's pocket had been sklifully picked!
*
*
It was only a hoax. A brilliant, If mischievous, Serajevo lawyer had hired a professional picker to do the pocketing. All the- goods were later returned in a plain van.
But it just goes to show... Without the Commission, not only the petty pickpockets but the really big men of the under- world would be pursuing their did in activities
they “ទ pre-war days; knowing that in crime the odds favoured the criminals.
Now crime knows no national frontiers; close lalson has turned the balance to the other scale; with this clearing house of information the war on the world's crooks has developed from guerilla campaigning to an attack
international
front.
on
in
*
*
'And there's a moral some- where in all this. If the nations can be got around a table to defeat the criminals who attack society's laws, It should be pos- sible to get them round a table to deal similarly with the more who criminals dangerous threaten society itself.
-To-day's Thought
HAD ! a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, and a voice of tron, I could not sum up all the forms of crime.
---VEROIL.