Fancies into Facts

(See front cover)

Some day the New York or Chicago police may tyrannize over honest citizens in such outrageous fashion as to move the Congress of the U. S. to investigate. Such an emergency might cause the City of New York or of Chicago to call General John Joseph Pershing to the post of Police Commissioner, in hope of restoring public confidence in policemen. Conceivably a great lawyer and statesman, such as Charles Evans Hughes, might say, in speaking of the application of a police third degree to some young woman: "Every father of an American girl sees in the affair of Miss X-- an example of police methods which might be applied to his own innocent daughter."

Last week the exact counterpart of all these fanciful suppositions occurred in London. The newspaper of world's largest circulation in any language, the London Daily Mail has been devoting 16 columns per day to the story.

Byng for Pershing. The police force in which the British public has lost confidence is that associated with the once honored name of Scotland Yard. The national hero who consented to become Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, last week, is the great "General Lord Byng of Vimy Ridge," or, less colloquially, Julian Hedworth George Byng, Baron Byng of Vimy, Viscount Byng of Vimy and of Thorpe le Soken, recently Governor General of His Majesty's Dominion of Canada (1921-26), and grandson of Field Marshal Sir John Byng who fought and conquered with the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo.

Never before has a Peer of the Realm been called to the Police Commissionership.

The retiring Commissioner, Sir William Thomas Francis Horwood, who offers "age" as his excuse for resigning, is 59. Lord Byng is 65.

Simon for Hughes. Not the Congress of the U. S. but its political equivalent, the Parliament of Great Britain, has appointed the Extraordinary Tribunal (TIME, June 18) which was probing, last week, into the suspected employment of third degree methods upon a young woman, Miss Irene Marjory Savidge.

Not Charles Evans Hughes but the great British Liberal, Sir John Simon, highest feed London barrister, veteran statesman, and Chairman of the Indian Statutory Commission, said: "Every father of an English girl sees in the affair of Miss Savidge an example of police methods which might be applied to his own innocent daughter."

The British public knows with absolute certainty that Miss Savidge is an innocent young woman. She has submitted herself to the scrutiny of the person from whom she had most to fear, the Medical Examiner of Scotland Yard, and has been certified to be a "virgo intacta"--fact duly chronicled by the whole British press.

Not one spinster in a million would offer equally good proof of her own innocence.

"Schoolgirl of Sixteen." The affair of Miss Savidge arose when she was acquitted of a charge of improper conduct in Hyde Park with Sir Leo Chiozza Money, onetime Parliamentary Secretary to David Lloyd George. The two constables who made the false arrest have been fined -L-10 ($48), stand today in danger of prosecution for perjury, and would be aided in proving themselves honest men by statements subsequently taken down from Miss Savidge at Scotland Yard. She was hustled there by constables after her acquittal, and examined amid circumstances smacking of the third degree.

As Miss Savidge testified before the Extraordinary Tribunal, appraising reporters scribbled: "pretty . . . dressed in black with canary colored ribbons at her throat . . . light brown hair . . . pink-and-white complexion . . . looked like a schoolgirl of sixteen . . . slight cockney accent . . . provoked laughter with some of her naive replies, but she herself did not laugh . . . thanked the usher when she handed her a glass of water and smelling salts ... sat playing with the stopper as counsel continued their questions. . . ."

The actual age of Irene Marjory Savidge is 22. The three "naive" sentences in her testimony which appeared to carry greatest conviction were: "I thought that at Scotland Yard they could summon the King if they wanted to. It's a big place with big people there. ... I thought I had to do everything they told me. . . . When I got home and was told that I needn't have gone to Scotland Yard to be questioned--well, that was when I fainted."

Model Inquisitor. So outrageous were the reported details of Miss Savidge's interrogation at Scotland Yard, that when her inquisitor, Inspector Collins, appeared before the Extraordinary Tribunal, it was hoped by thousands of Britons that he would turn out to be an inexperienced or at least an exceptionally bad inspector. The nation's confidence in its police was well-nigh shattered at one blow when Inspector Collins established that he is an officer of 32 years' experience, 93 times complimented by Judges from the Bench for his efficiency, and never before complained against by police or public.

The third degree methods, if they were used, had been applied not by an inexperienced officer, not by a bad or exceptional officer, but by a model inspector, typifying the best men now to be found at Scotland Yard.

Tribunal Probes. Counsel for Miss Savidge grilled Inspector Collins as to whether he had alternately threatened and cajoled her, called her "Irene," tried to press cigarets upon her, questioned and examined her as to the length and color of her petticoat, and finally asked: "You're really a good girl and you've never had a man?"

Inspector Collins denied that he had threatened, admitted that he had called Miss Savidge "Irene," said that she had asked for cigarets herself, swore that she had voluntarily stood up to show her pink petticoat, and denied asking Miss Savidge if she had ever had a man.

As the grilling continued, Inspector Collins was caught in one palpable lie, and appeared to arouse little credulity for certain of his statements. When some 2,000 pages of testimony had been taken from numerous witnesses, the case of Scotland Yard was summed by Sir Henry Honywood Curtis-Bennett: "I do not want it supposed that the police have done anything of which they are ashamed. ... If you impute bad faith to these officers of Scotland Yard, everything becomes possible. But if you assume that there are at Scotland Yard certain traditions of honor not likely to be broken, then other matters become much clearer. ..."

Little Liar? The case for Miss Savidge was summed by Sir Patrick Hastings: "Is she telling the truth or is she one of the most consummate little liars a court has ever seen?

"If the police had found out one thing against the character of this girl we should have heard it. We may take it that for all their inquiries and resources there is nothing in her life which could be used against her credibility.

"We are told that without being asked at all, she stood up before these two police officers*. . . saying that she had been sitting in the park within three or four inches of a man with her skirts above her knees, with pink petticoats, and presumably flesh-colored stockings.

"Did she want to say she was guilty? Was she there to volunteer to these officers that she was a bad girl? Can you believe it?

"I ask this tribunal to weigh against her the evidence of these officers and take her alone against the lot of them. The suggestion I make is that the officers [who examined Miss Savidge] thought they were not failing in their duty, if they helped to ensure that there should be no prosecution for perjury [of the constables who falsely arrested her]."

Man Savidge. As the Extraordinary Tribunal retired to thrash out a verdict on the conduct of the police and to draft a formal report to Parliament, one quaint bit of testimony was recalled as deeply and philosophically significant.

The witness was Miss Savidge's father. He established that he has been "a confidential clerk to a firm of accountants in Lincoln's Inn Fields for 21 years," and explained that both he and Mrs. Savidge have known from the first of their 22-year-old daughter's occasional dinners and excursions with Sir Leo Chiozza Money, 58, married.

When grilled by counsel for Scotland Yard as to how he, as a father, could possibly justify such an attitude, Mr. Savidge made a sturdy, forthright reply which could only have come from a lower class Briton who knows that he may never aspire even to the rank of gentleman.

Said Man Savidge: "I was vain enough to be pleased that I had a daughter who could be sufficiently interesting to attract a gentleman like Sir Leo. ... I have a jolly good girl for a daughter."

Poor Sir William. The ignominy of Sir William Horwood, the ousted or resigned Police Commissioner, was made complete, last week, when Right Honorable Members of Parliament probed, on their own account, into a recent order forbidding Scotland Yard police to chew gum. Amid unbridled hilarity it was established that Sir William had instituted this imposing reform in the belief that a constable not wise enough to spit out his gum before piping on his whistle might blow enough chicle into the instrument to render it "clogged and unserviceable."

No laughing matter was the assertion of two Conservative M. P.'s that, "The police are now so terrorized by public opinion that not one arrest for immorality has been made in Hyde Park since the Savidge inquiry began, although previously such arrests had averaged one a day"; and that, "Conditions on the park benches and behind the shrubbery are becoming indescribable."

Mop Man Byng. That General Lord Byng will mop up Scotland Yard until its forces glow pink and stalwart with respectability, and that he will then defend them to the last park bench or shrub seemed as certain, last week, as that the hereditary motto of the fighting Byngs is "Tuebor" or "I will defend."

*A police stenographer assisted Inspector Collins.