Evening star., 1923-11-27
BY THE MARQUIsE DE FONTENOY

Criminals from every corner of Eu-
rope, as well as from the western
hemisphere. are fiocking TO the Rhine
land, where the policy of the Berlin
government has undermined all re-
spect for the authority of the law
and where the maintenance OF order
is restricted TO the Ruhr districts
militarily occupied By the French,
who, in spite of the sinister maneu-
vers of Berlin and the encouragement
which it has given to every form of
resistance 10 the French. manage 10
avert bloodshed among the contend
ing German factions. Elsewhere in
the Rhineland, however. the factional
fighting is almost continuous, and
those who have, for the sake Of the
opportunities of plunder. enrolled
themselves under the banner of the
separatists. comprising hordes of Rus
sian bolsheviki and other scum, lose
no chance OF destroying property, fac
residences in the most approved COM
munist fashion. That they
are very largely criminals is shown
by the significant fact that the other
day. at Rheydl in the Rhineland.
where they temporarily got the up
per hand, they made special point
OF devastating the police department
and particularly of destroying the
criminal registers and the rogues'
gallery, also all the files and records.
The insurgents have followed a SINH
lar course elsewhere in the Rhine
land, just as the terrorists proceeded
to do at Petrograd and Moscow when
Trotsky. Lenin and their savage
horde obtained supreme power.
I; y X I.
III this connection it may be re-
called that toward the close of the
great commune iIsurrection in Paris,
in 1871. when, by reason of the large
army of loyal troops massed at Yer
sailles. the certainty of the defeat of
the rebellion became apparent, and it
was decided by the rebels to destroy
the Tuileries and most of the other
public buildings by fire, the first
measure in this direction was the par
tial destruction of the Prefecture Of
Police, of the Ogence de la Surete and
Of the Ministry of the Interior, and
the complete obiiteration of all the
criminal dossiers and records which
had been filed there since the reign Of
the first Napoleon. The consignment
10 tho flames Of the Palace of the
Tuileries and of the Cour des Complies
was merely a secondary considera-
tion.
The main aim of the Communards
and of their female allies. the Furies,
SO appropriately named the "Petro-
leuses," was to wipe out of existence
all the criminal records. That Is why
today the bulk of the criminal records
on file at the Prefecture de Police and
at the Agence de la Surete in Paris
only date from 1870. Those which
antedate that fateful year have been
compiled since from provincial
sources.
If I draw attention to this fact it
is because in all the big cities of the
United States and of Latin Am merica,
the element of the population fmbued
with communist doctrines and with
anarchist ambitions Is very large and
constantly growing. thanks TO pol,
from Moscow. In all of these cities
considerations of mistaken economy
stand in the way of increasing the
police force in proportion with the
criminal element. Each municipal
police corps ought to be at least twice
as numerous in order to afford the
only adequate protection or lie and
property against these foes OF so-
ciety, whom lack of union, rendering
diff1cult any concerted movement, has
prevented until now from getting the
upper hand and from starting out to
piunder and loot banks. shops. public
institutions and the private resi-
dences of the wealthy. But when
these mobs. encouraged by bolshevist
teachings. find the necessary leaders
and obtain, momentarily, the upper
hand to pursue that course of rapine
and bloodshed for which they yearn'
one Of their very first points of at
tack will be the police headquarters,
for the purpose of destroying the
rogues' gallery and all the police
records. That is why, in order to
avert a fate such as befell the police
records at Rheydl, in the Rhineland.
the other day, and Petrograd and
Moscow in 1917 and Paris in 1871, it