. I have seen you arrest
armed murderers, have seen you tactfully reproving a drunkard, have seen
you solving tangled problems of crime, have seen you charging a mob,
have seen you playing with a lost baby. I do not think there is any
phase of your work which I have not seen. And I want the public to know
you.

You, whether you be Commissioner or constable, occupy a position of
delicate and peculiar responsibility. You are poised between the trust
and suspicion of those you serve, and you are never quite sure whether
you will be blessed or blamed. I, who realise something of your
temptations and your qualities, know how seldom you fail in an
emergency, how rarely you abuse your powers.

You will forgive me when I say you are not perfect. You have your little
failings, and at times the defect of one man recoils on 20,000. There
are matters I should like to see changed. But, on the whole, you are
admittedly still the best policeman in the world.

The war has claimed you and others of your profession. Astute commanding
officers have recognised you as "men who are handled and made," and many
a constable of a year ago now wears an officer's stars. There are those
of you who have gained other distinctions.

There is no branch of the service here dealt with that has not sent of
its best to the fighting line. None will recognise more willingly than
you in the trenches that the luck has been yours. We know (you and I)
that others have been, by no will of their own, left behind. It is to
these, in no small degree, that the safety and equanimity of London have
been due. And it is as well that here tribute should be paid to those
who have endured without retort the sneers of the malicious and
ill-informed as well as the multiplicity of extra duties the war has
entailed upon them.

One advantage, at least, the war has conferred on you. It has exploded
the ignorance of your profession to those thousands of citizens who have
elected to share something of your responsibilities. They at least know
something of your work; they at least know that the special constable
can never replace, though he may assist, the experienced police-officer.
You always understood the Londoner; now the Londoner is coming to
understand you.

I have attempted no more than a sketch of the great machine of which you
form part. But if it enlightens the public in some degree as to the way
they are served by you it will have achieved its purpose.

Yours si