It must be remembered that the police who are neces-
sarily not well educated, have to work nowadays in circumstances which did not exist a generation ago. The Official Secrets Acts—much resorted to during the War— placed powers in their hands which they had never exercised before. D.O.R.A. posed them with tasks demanding the highest functions of discrimination and discretion. Motoring itself has made a policeman far more than ever before a dispenser of summary justice on the roads and in the streets. It would have been a miracle if the strain had not been felt. We are not sufficiently informed to say whether the recent drop of monthly arrests in Hyde Park from a considerable number to nothing was a sign that the police were in a huff as the result of the Savidge debate. But if they were, either they, or their superiors who inspired them, were responsible for one of those temporary lapses which it will be the duty of Lord Byng's renovating hand to make impossible. * *
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