The New York herald., 1922-12-17

notice the District Attorney must
Gull such as are crimes, and then decide
whether or not to prosecute them. If he
bothered himself with every trifling offense
he could doubtless occupy his full time witt
the horrors of expectoration alone. But the
District Attorney can no more prosecute al
violations Of law than can the police arres
all the violators. They do the best they can
marching round and round like the supers
in stage army. to create the impression
of numbers, cover all the territory possi-
BILE and hit a head when they happen to
see one. They have got to stop burglary
arson, and at the same time enforce the
traffic regulations and arrest theater ticket
spectators. They can't do it, There are
not enough of them to go around
The District Attorney is in the same box.
He cannot possibly prosecute all the crimes
that are going on under our noses every
day. 1t would take 10000 District Attor-
neys and as many courts. We should all
have to turn ourselves into volunteer po-
leemen-and then arrest ourselves. The
result is that the District Attorney, apart
from those crimes which are brought to his
attention by the person directly aggrieved,
has to choose which he will prosecute. He
can't clean up the whole town. Shall he
go after Fifth avenue or Broadway or
Greenwich Village? Investigate the Park
Department, Bellevue Hospital or the
Mayor? In the end he sits down some
where, presumably in his office, and waits
for trouble. When trouble arrives in the
person Of "Mr. Assmanshausen," who, in
troduced by Messrs. Dolan and Grady, tells
him that the greatest crime in the history
of Wall Street has been or is about to be
committed in connection with the sale of
the second mortgage bonds of the Tittlebat
Tidewater Company. he has to fish or cut
bait. And either course has its own special
misery. For if he finds that somewhere
tucked away in the complicated financing
of the Tistlebat Company there is a genuine,
if elusive. cause for criminal action Ne may
have to spend weeks or months. employ
expert accountants and assign half a dozen
or more of his best men to the job of un-
tangling mass of contracts guarantees
undeTwritings and loans i'm order to get at
it while other matters are pushed aside
and clamorous complainants forced to wait
And even then! After he has found viola
tion of some statute that will stand the
acid test of demurrer, has caught legal
cat that can be forced to fight-then, alasi
he may know full well in his heart of
hearts that the affair is too complicated
ever to be elucidated to common jury
should indictments be found! Shall he out
with it and say so? Shall he frankly admit
that the criminal law Is unsuited to cope
with the iniquities of corporate f1nance-
freely confess his helplessness after the
newspapers have with one accord COM
mended his assiduity in the Tittlebat mat
ter? Or shall he go ahead and get, his
indictments with the secret knowledge that
he will never try them or, If he does, that
he will go down to inevitable defeat? In
any case, sooner or later, he will be accused
of being under Wall Street influence
damned if he does. damned if he doesn't!
He is in an even harder position when he
knows or suspects that the complainant is
moved. not by desire to have the wicked
brought to justice. but to depress the
market value of the stock of the corpora
ton whose directors he accuses of crime.
Just as there are persons who make a good
living by threatening to procure injunc-
tions to restrain what they claim to be the
ultra Uires acts of wealthy corporations or
to make other sorts of trouble. so there are
those who seek to stimulate the criminal
authorities to begin proceedings against
corporations of whose stock they have gone
heavily short. During the period when the