The American Gangsters
The notorious gangster Jack Diamond, who is said to be dying from shots received by him from rival gangsters, deserves sympathy so far as it is legitimate to sympathize with an unquestionable scoundrel. To the last he has preserved the code of his profession and refused to say who his attackers were. That was to be expected : but he attracts sympathy for a more cogent reason. It is evident now that he was glad to leave his own country and come to Europe not to escape the police, but to escape assassination. The American police fail in an extraordinary number of cases to arrest criminals or to establish a case against those who are arrested. When Diamond came to Europe he was regarded as an undesirable immigrant in all the countries which he visited, but the American police would not state a case against him. He was, however, sent back to the United States and in Philadelphia he virtually invited the police to arrest him—because prison is the safest place for anyone under threat of assassination. The police would not do this and he went obscurely to New York, where he stayed in a small hotel. The assassins, however, had tracked him down. The rest we know. Such treatment of any man puts a premium on murder.
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