l law. Dr. Wilson is such a man. He is, as has been remarked, a
Presbyterian, a Calvinist, a militant moralist. In that role, devoted to
that high cause, clad in that white garment, he was purged of all
obligations of honour to any merely earthly power. His one obligation
was to the moral law--in brief, to the ordinance of God, as determined
by Christian pastors. Under that moral law, specifically, he was
charged to search out and determine its violations by the accused in the
dock, to wit, by the German nation, according to the teaching of those
pastors and the light within, and to fix and execute a punishment that
should be swift, terrible and overwhelming.

To this business, it must be granted by even his most extravagant
opponents, he addressed himself with the loftiest resolution and
singleness of purpose, excluding all puerile questions of ways and
means. He was, by the moral law, no more bound to take into account the
process whereby the accused was brought to book and the weight of
retribution brought to bear than a detective is bound to remember how
any ordinary prisoner is snared for the mill of justice. The detective
himself may have been an important factor in that process; he may have
taken the prisoner by some stratagem involving the most gross false
pretences; he may have even played the _agent provocateur_ and so
actually suggested, planned and supervised the crime. But surely that
would be a ridiculous critic who would argue thereby that the detective
should forthwith forget the law violated and the punishment justly
provided for it, and go over to the side of the defence on the ground
that his dealings with the prisoner involved him in obligations of
honour. The world would laugh at such a moral moron, if it did not
actually destroy him as an enemy of society. It recognizes the two codes
that we have described, and it knows that they are antagonistic. It
expects a man sworn to the service of morality to discharge his duty at
any cost to his honour, just as it expects a man publicly devoted to
honour to keep his word at any cost to his or to the public morals.
Moreover, it inclines, when there is a conflict, toward the side of
morals; the overwhelming majority of men are men of morals, not men of
honour. They believe that it is vastly more important that the guilty
should be detected, taken into custody and exposed to the rigour of the
law than that the honour of this or that man should be preserved. In