Yard's Year

Scotland Yard was ready to admit that perhaps it was not the world's best police force when in 1932 what Britain called a crime wave brought London 23 murders, 13,800 burglaries. What shocked the new Commissioner, big-framed, bigger-voiced Hugh Montague ("Boom") Trenchard, Baron Trenchard, was the discovery that the Yard's crack men rose in rank not by ability but by seniority. He soon found out that the Vienna police force was not only the world's best but also the most educated. Every Viennese police lieutenant has a law degree. "Boom" Trenchard began scouting in earnest for the "best brains." He brought in university men, pushed aside the aged and thick-witted, set up a new police college the members of which were obliged to own and wear dinner coats, to pass examinations in higher mathematics, law and sciences. Last week brains had brought Lord Trenchard his reward, in the Yard report for 1933.

Crime in London last year: 21 murders,

20 murderers dead by hanging or their own hand. For the 21st, the murder of a language teacher from Cyprus, the Yard nabbed a man but lost a conviction on the evidence of ballistics experts. Only one big jewel robbery marred the year. But what made "Boom" Trenchard smile under his military mustache is the strange calm that has fallen over London since Jan. 1 : not one murder, not one big robbery.

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