Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/261

 as has been pointed out, is not so much in the policemen as in that bêtisse humaine which expects such superhuman work of them.

This insistent confusion of vice with crime has not only had the effect of fostering both, but is the cause of the corruption of the police. Their proper function is to protect life and property and maintain the public peace, and this the police of American cities perform as well as policemen anywhere. But when, by a trick of the sectarian mind, the term crime is made to include all the follies and weaknesses and vices of humanity, where there is added the duty of enforcing statutes against a multitude of acts, some of which only Puritanical severity classes as crimes, others of which are regarded by the human beings in the community with indifference, tolerance or sympathy, while still others are inherent in mysterious and imperative instincts which balk all efforts at general control, the task becomes wholly impossible and beyond human ability.

The police know it, and everybody knows it, and it is the hypocrisy of society that corrupts them. The police know, intuitively, and without any process of ratiocination, that people are human, and subject to human frailties; they are pretty human themselves, and, in common with most of the people in the community, see no great wrong in some of the things that are done which the sumptuary laws condemn. Most of them, for instance, drink a glass of beer now and then, or play a game of cards, or go to a baseball game on Sunday. They are not apt to be gentlemen of the most refined and exquisite tastes.