Polis

“ The confiscation of a great part of the Polish estates, expropriation without compensation, and evacuation of Polish peasants from maneuver areas and from German settlements.
“3. Encroachments and confiscations in the industries, in commerce and trade, and in the field of other private property.
“4. Mass arrests and shootings by the German Police who applied the system of collective responsibility.
“5. The rigorous methods of recruiting workers.
“6. The extensive paralyzing of cultural life. ”

“ The people were impressed by the fact that police was the special province of the highest personage in the land, at a time when they were incapable of appreciating the abstract importance of the subject. The responsibility for peace-maintenance was in this way definitely fixed on the one individual, who besides being best able to enforce compliance with his commands, had also the greatest stake in the continued preservation of the public peace; a kingdom without order being a kingdom in name only. ”

“ Thus, while the police entertain no animosity against these men, we feel—I feel and every officer under my command feels—that we are bound by our oaths and by our loyalty to the State and to society to meet force with force, and cunning with cunning. We are the conservators of the law and the preservers of the peace, and the law will be vindicated and the peace preserved in spite of any and all attacks. ”

“ The members of the English police are public servants in the fullest sense of the term; not servants of any individual, of any particular class or sect, but servants of the whole community—excepting only that part of it which in setting the law at defiance, has thereby become a public enemy. The strength of the Man in Blue, properly understood, lies in the fact that he has behind him the whole weight of public opinion; for he only wages war against the law-breaker, and in this contest can claim the goodwill of every loyal citizen. ”

“ Your Excellency will feel that with the few gendarmes I have, it is impossible for me to make the police of the army. I shall receive the 75 men of surplus of the army, but I must beg her to observe that when I have a thousand gendarmes I shall not be able to suppress disorder if the gendarmerie is not respected, as well as its general orders, Nor its officers maintain discipline and obedience, in fine, if the regiments do not make their police and execute the orders of the Emperor. ”

“ Commonly they are, or appear to be, young, and all have a gentlemanlike appearance. In a word, they appear to be equal to the best European police of the present day, and stand immeasurably above the guardian of the peace, or rather the raiser of dispeace, as he appeared some decades ago on the European continent. During the latest revolt the police were employed by the Government as infantry, and elicited general admiration by the fire, the gallantry, and the contempt of death with which they went into action with their old favourite weapon, the Japanese sword. ”

“ The police, acting for the central power, is supposed to control everything, to criticise conduct, to protect as well as correct, and it thus becomes possessed of very considerable power. In Russia, under Nicholas I., the police was well styled the mainspring of the State machinery; and although under Alexander II. more liberal principles obtained, the growth of Nihilism led to reaction, and the police recovered all its old authority. Great pains have been taken to perfect its processes, to give it increased strength and enlarge its action. ”

“ And for decisive evidence that the new establishment of a police force is not, by the crimes which it is the means of binging to light, the cause of the prodigious increase of crime of late years in the British empire, we refer to the contemporary examples of two other countries, in which a police force on a far more extensive scale has been established, and has been found the means of effecting a signal diminution of crime and commitment. ”

“ As there was no method known for the prevention of crime by an organised force of police, and no deterrent exerted on would-be criminals by the existence of a standing body of soldiery, the only possible weapon to be used against them was to be found in the law courts. ”

“ As the German Parliament in no way resembles the British Parliament, so do the German, police in no way resemble the British police. The German police, mounted or unmounted, are armed with a revolver, a sword, and not infrequently provided with a machine-gun. They have powers of search and arrest without warrant. They are allowed at their discretion to strike or otherwise maltreat not only civilians, but soldiers. ”

“ These vessels of verse, O Great Goddess, are filled with invisible tears,
With the sobs and sweat of my spirit and her desolate brooding for years;
See, I lay them — not on thine altar, for they are unpolished and plain,
Not rounded enough by the potter, too much burnt in the furnace of pain;
But here in the dust, in the shadow, with a sudden wild leap of the heart
I kneel to tenderly kiss them, then in silence arise to depart.
I linger awhile at the portal with the light of the crimsoning sun
On my wreathless brow bearing the badges of battles I've fought in not won. ”

“ Now, suppose that this police-force becomes the army of a political Power, and the diplomats of that Power say to a smaller one: "We outnumber you; we are going to annex your territory, and you are going to pay us tribute." And the smaller Power says: "What are you going to give us for that tribute?" And the larger replies: "Nothing. You are weak; we are strong; we gobble you up. It is the law of life; always has been—always will be to the end." ”

“ Still another evil, and one which of late has been much ventilated in Germany, is the abuse of power by officers and non-commissioned officers towards their subordinates. There has [xxiii] always been too much of this in the German army, and it would carry us too far afield to trace here the causes. In itself it seems a strange anomaly that in an army which calls itself by the proud term of a “nation in arms,” and whose membership is recruited from every stratum of society, there should be such wholesale maltreatment of the privates by their superior officers. ”

“ The Assembly, in 1790, first instituted this almost perfectly organized police force, and Napoleon himself thought so highly of them that he wrote to Berthier in 1812: “Take not the police with you, but conserve them for the guarding of the country-side. Two or three hundred soldiers are as nothing, but two or three hundred police will assure the tranquillity and good order of the people at large.” ”

“ For some time back, in the absence of that restraining influence which an efficient police force might have afforded, people had readily run into factions; and, with arms in their hands, had supported their particular opinions by force, in defiance of all authority, and with a degree of violence that would never have been tolerated for a moment in any community where the value of peace-maintenance was duly appraised and properly insisted upon. ”

“ Officers in light blue, in mauve and maroon—mincing butterflies, who look as if an hour's march in the sun would send them to the hospital, ogle them from the sidewalk. Along with them are many young bloods out of uniform, barbered and powdered like chorus men made up for their work. You will see few young men in Europe with whom the notion of general conscription and the horrors of war can be associated with less regret. ”

“ But you know, Monsieur le Baron, the sharp lines that divide men of different trades: if you build a house, you do not set a carpenter to do smith's work. Well, there are two branches of the police—the political police and the judicial police. The political police never interfere with the other branch, and vice versa. If you apply to the chief of the political police, he must get permission from the Minister to take up our business, and you would not dare to explain it to the head of the police throughout the kingdom. A police-agent who should act on his own account would lose his place. ”

“ To comport, then, with the surroundings in the ruling classes and with the necessity for discipline among men so base in mercenary wars for the benefit of the ruling classes alone, the Organization and Administration were made to consist of two [365] classes—officers and men—as widely separated as master and slave; the officer became by laws, written and unwritten, despotic and supercilious, with power even to take life without responsibility; the man servile and blindly obedient in the most abject sense, without remedies against his cruel wrongs. ”

“ With the establishment of an official police guard the mystical prestige of authority vanishes at once; with a certain amount of audacity, every one considers himself superior to authority; the assassin realizes his strength and only has to watch his opportunity to make an attempt against an official. We preached differently for the Goys, but we can see the results to which open methods of protection have led them. ”

“ I expect you have rounded up a few, Colonel, from the Embassy.’
‘Not many,’ replied Winter. ‘We have no authority. All we can do is to warn the American police, and even they can’t act unless the man does something that brings him under the criminal code, which he is usually too smart to do. ”

“ WHEN men began to congregate in communities, laws for the good government and protection of the whole number became a necessity, and this led to the creation of police. The word itself is derived from πὁλις (“city”) , a collection of people within a certain area: a community working regularly together for mutual advantage and defence. The work of defence was internal as well as external, for since the world began there have been dissidents and outlaws, those who declined to accept the standard of conduct deemed generally binding, and so set law at defiance. ”

“ They acted, little conscious of such function on their part, as an immense volunteer Police Force, stationed everywhere, united, disciplined, feudally regimented, ready for action; strong Teutonic men; who on the whole proved effective men, and drilled this wild Teutonic people into unity and peaceable co-operation better than others could have done! ”

“ Our national police has always been of the people and for the people, and obviously at no time could long be used to oppress those from whom its strength was derived, provided only that one and the same sentiment pervaded a majority of the oppressed. ”

“ Preserving the public peace against the machinations of a secret band of conspirators who succeeded temporarily in deluding a portion of the people, and in partially alienating them from their legitimate rulers, is a duty too nearly allied to the police service to be a favourite one with soldiers. ”

“ They are nothing more or less than the executive police of the kingdom, and are under the command of the prefect of each department. They are mounted and completely equipped with sword, pistols, carbine and bayonet; and when it is recollected that to resist a gendarme, is to resist the law, it will be readily conceived that they are a formidable body. As their power is great, so also is their responsibility; and they encounter death as the penalty for any deviation from the strict letter of their orders. They are perfect machines and the most efficient police in the world. ”

“ But until it does, it is quite evident that the two—the army and the police force—have in reality diametrically opposed rôles. The police exist as an instrument of social co-operation; the armies as the natural outcome of the quaint illusion that though one city could never enrich itself by "capturing" or "subjugating" another, in some unexplained way one country can enrich itself by capturing or subjugating another. ”

“ The policeman, like any civilian, fights for his skin; he gets a drubbing and returns it with interest. But since his weapon does not give him so manifest an advantage as a sword would, the public consider the fracas a fair fight. And after all, the combatants must appear before a magistrate; in the police-court they are on equal terms, and witnesses are heard on either side. There is no prejudice in favour of the policeman. ”

“ No division of the army should ever be without a strong detachment of police, either temporarily or permanently attached to it; and thus crimes would either be prevented through their vigilance, or those guilty of them immediately punished; the resources of a country would then neither be lawlessly seized and frittered away by marauders, nor would the inhabitants fail to bring supplies to the regularly established markets of the army, where they would be sure to find protection from the police. ”

“ No British police serve within its confines, nor is it garrisoned by British troops. British supervision is represented by a single political officer, whose moral influence is the slender thread that ties the State to the protecting British Power. ”

“ The idea of crushing the coming Revolution by efficient police forces is generally attributed to Protopopov. It is true that Protopopov specially trained the police for the coming Revolution and equipped it with machine guns. ”

“ MY LORD:—Since Bonaparte's departure for Germany, the vigilance of the police has much increased: our patrols are doubled during the night, and our spies more numerous and more insolent during the day. Many suspected persons have also been exiled to some distance from this capital, while others, for a measure of safety, have been shut up in the Temple, or in the Castle of Vincennes. These 'lettres de cachet', or mandates of arrest, are expedited during the Emperor's absence exclusively by his brother Louis, after a report, or upon a request, of the Minister of Police, Fouche. ”