The Police Centenary Last Saturday the Metropolitan Police celebrated their
centenary.amid..easual, but none the less unmistak- able, expressions of good will. Doubts about the integrity of the police are expressed from time to time, but, as the recent Commission pointed out, they are nearly all traceable to the difficulties of the police in enforcing laws which are of their nature unenforceable—perhaps because they, seem, to a normally law-abiding people to be irra- tional. The fact b that the Metropolitan Police enjoy not only the respect, but the genuine liking of the people, who regard them not as enemies but as protectors. Sir Robert Peel's scheme of creating the Metropolitan Police was hammered out so thoroughly in all its details that it is often supposed that it was the peculiar product of his brain and that no one else had thought of such a force before. That is not so. Others had been at work on the subject. The Dogberrys of the Watch were so hopelessly corrupt and inefficient that the need of -reform had long been admitted.
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