1937-08-19 — Page 18

THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH, THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 1937.

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THURSDAY, August 19, 1937.

SOVIET PURGES

Н

cer-

The continued purges which are reported from Moscow sug- gest that to keep the Red Army) and State free from traitorous

become now elements has whole-time job. History

not provide any tainly does |exnet parallel to these wholesale Clearly, and trials. arrests there is either much rottenness in the Soviet system, or else Stalin is bent on keeping his hold on the Government, cost what it may. The truth may, in fact, lie in both the one cir- cumstance and the other. Cer-: tainly the crimes for which of these

batches successive officials are accused, and to which they usually plead guilty, are about as black as they could not only bc. They involve efforts to undermine the Soviet system, but also betrayal of the nation to its enemies. If the crimes have been of this on- 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

I

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 conference for a long time.

It was, of course, a conference on crime: but com- honest paratively

crime, not the sort that breeds non-interveti- tion committees.

And these men, far from agreeing on how not (officially, at any rate) to intervene, have planned very definité Intervention in the war waged con- stantly by the unseen army of the under- world.

our

WC, in

own world, are an odd lot. Since 1872 we have been participating in International Prison Conferences: evolving ingenious systems of cellular planning, of scales, of remission grading the criminal classes.

But it 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 years of the International Police Commission, all that is gone for ever. Loose contacts have been converted into tight organisa- tion. Casual help given by a friendly police chief now is re- placed by an entirely new tech- nique of international co-opera- tion.

*

*

A brief telephone call from Paris or New York to Whitehall 1212 puts the whole organisa- tion of Scotland Yard at the disposal of the Parls 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 prosale policemen who inhabit gloomy Government bulldings.

*

The professional detective is He is seldom a Philo Vance,

sometimes bald, frequently portly, occasionally even pon- derous. He seldom uses high- powered motor-cars and never the gleaming white yachts com-

to the best detective

mon 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 sprend financial

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 casc was not excep- tional or handled particularly rapidly.

The Belgian police a week or so ago asked Berlin to wireless the description of a wanted counterfeiter. The request was made at three o'clock in the afternoon. By eleven o'clock the Belgians had been told that

Overhaul

Your Habits

it's just a habit with him."

and Trotsky sought to set up "How often do we say it, imply- whether you have to stop to think he indulged in for a certain perlod |

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 48 an argument in favour of their theory that her civilisation lags far behind the times. We the about hear many boasts power of the Russian Army and Air Force. Russia's enemics, however, will ask themselves how far the vast system she has sot up in a short time would respond efficiently to the chal- With so much enge of war. dissension, scheming, and trea- chery behind the scenes, there might well be a colossal collapse in a much shorter period than it took the Tsarist armies to collapse in the Great War. This can, of course, be only a matter for speculation, but the thought Inevitably obtrudes itself when contemplation is given to the

#1

Next time you are dressing, notice have to make thelu work a habit to 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 will find that you have unconsciously ever much they were blessed with particular foible that occasioned the will put first in your jacket. You could not hope to make a living, bow- remark!

is to associate the made such a linbit of dressing in a genius.

The most famous example of an The tendency word "habit" with something repre- certain way that to change it would

lope, the novelist. Employed as a hensible, or at least with the dull and entail condiderable mental and phy-habitual writer was Anthony Troi-

a sical labour. routine tasks of life. Actually,

A habit most of us would do well Civil Servant during the day, he made large part of our lives is based on

to overhaul is that of getting up in a habit of writing a certain quota of hobit.

or fell never exceeded to rush done. He This being so, it is a good plan to the morning. The majority who go words after his ordinary work wAS overhaul our habits now and then. to work or business have It would show us how large a part through breakfast and hurry to the short of the total 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.

We eat largely as a matter of habit. to form new hablis that would make that we shall be late. If we made

habit of rising five minutes earlier, life flow more smoothly.

come very strong, we take meals at There are some habits, seemingly we should be saved all that, worry without waiting for hunger to be

end rush.

that regular intervals. But this habit of trivial, that have become so much a

It might be argued against we enil of our behaviour that part

habit that it would result in getting eating can become a bad one when them "second nature."

to hn, un- As Uny children we had to learn lo to the station or bus stop too early, we cat without thinking what we are

and there would be nothing to do. eating, and settle down walk, to put one foot deliberately in Here the cultivation of another habit imaginative diet.

useful If we To-day,

had

Doctors to-day are trying to make would be front of the other.

surroundings us cultivate the habit of thinking Either ignore your to stop and think every time we want- ed to take a step, life would be in- and read your newspaper, or carry a about our food so that we cat only tolerabic. We should never have

Modern life brings with it the need time to think of anything else. So pocket edition of one of those books what is going to do us good.

have "always meant to read.“ it is with a hundred other things that By reading a few pages whenever for several habits. Looking both before crossing a road, switch- we do every day.

you have a spare moment, you will ways

electric light bulbs or mending cloe- On getting up in the morning we be surprised to find how much it ing off the current before replacing are guided by habit. We do not stop amounts to in a year.

I know a man who has read the tric frons are instances of this. to think whether we shall wash, or

Motoring, too, has brought its shave, or have a bath, or whether we whole of Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" shall have breakfast before doing any in that way. Now he is more than habits. Good ones make a good driver; bad ones bring their owner of there. Wo just do things in the half-way through the "Iliad."

into the Police Court. same order becauso is our habit.

you

Working And Eating Making Up Your Mind

Man is naturally a lazy animal who

A good many of us find that letters, constant evidence of discord

wants a slack time. Most of us hava 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 offices, shops, or facing an untidy mass in which we can tories, and work so many hours a day,nover flad anything we want. If only established, it has undergone But there are others whose work de-most of us made a habit of setting

half an hour a week to many changes. How long it will pends upon themselves.

Nobody fixes the hours of work for and answering them, we should save be able to continue in being on thors, artists, or musicians, They ourselves a great deal of worry, and its present basis time alone will all have the natural liking for a life our wives a great deal of annoyance.

(Continued on Page 3.7. of ease, and to overcome this they tell.

than

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

fawer established, no

100,000

cases have. been handled inter- nationally: petty cases some of them, cer- tainly, the criminals addicted to no worse than passport faking or the passing of

cheques. "bouncing

But there are other cases, too: the kind that curdle our blood in thrillers and gang- ster Alms murders and shootings, jewel bank robberies and hold-ups.

For those sinister gangs of international crooks really do exist outside the Imaging- tion of romantic novelists; but they don't exist for so long sinco the world's to-

polleemen got gether.

And there are stilr enough of them to.. All the Black List of the International Commission with the case histories of hundreds of thousands of public enemies, to add to that Black List 300 or so now names overy 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 kopt secret) you would see time 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, whore 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 the 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 skilfully picked!

It was only a hoax. A brilliant, if mischievous, Berajevo lawyer had hired a professional picker All the to do the pocketing. 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 they D. activities pre-war days; knowing that in crime the odds favoured the criminals.

Now crime knows no national frontiers; closo llalson 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 International attack on

front.

'an

And there's a moral some- where in all this. If the nations can be get around a table to- defcat the criminals who attack society's laws, it should be pas- sible to get them round a table- to deal similarly with the more who criminals threaten society itself.

dangerous

"To-day's Thought· HAD a hundred tongues, a hundred mouths, and a voice of iron, I could not sum up all the forms of crime,

VERGIL