he policeman who aspires to the rank of sergeant
undergoes a still more rigorous examination, extending over twenty
weeks of preparation, during which time he studies -- note this list,
ye "young barbarians all at play," German, rhetoric, writing,
arithmetic, common fractions, geography, history, especially the
history of the House of Hohenzollern from the time of the margraves to
the present time (!), political divisions of the earth, especially of
Prussia and Germany, the essential features of the constitution of the
Prussian Kingdom and German Empire, the organization and working of
the various state authorities in Prussia and Germany, elementary
methods of disinfection, common veterinary remedies, the police law as
applicable to innumerable matters from the treatment of the drunk,
blind, and lame, to evidences of murder, and the press law. The man
who passes such an examination would be more than qualified to take a
degree, at one of our minor colleges, if he knew English and the
classics were not required, and could well afford to sniff
disdainfully at the pelting shower of honorary degrees of Doctor of
Divinity, which descend from the commencement platforms of our more
girlish intellectual factories of orthodoxy.

The cost of the police in Berlin in 1880 was 2,494,722 marks; in 1890,
3,007,879 marks; in 1900, 6,065,975 marks; and in 1910, 8,708,165
marks.

I fancy that after an accident has taken place the literary, legal,
and hygienic details are cared for by the Berlin police as nowhere
else. In their management of the traffic they are distinctly lacking
in decision and watchfulness. On the western side of the Brandenburger
Tor there is seldom an hour, without a tangle of traffic which is
entirely unnecessary if the police knew their business. On the
Tiergarten Strasse, a rather narrow and much used thoroughfare in the
fashionable part of the town, trucks, cabs, and other vehicles are not
kept close to the curbs, often they drive along in pairs, slowing up
all the traffic, and at the east end of the street is a corner which
could easily be remedied by the building of a "refuge," and an
authoritative policeman to guard the three approaches. Not once, but
scores of times, at the very important corner of Unter den Linden and
Wilhelm Strasse I have seen the policeman talking to friends on the
curb, quite oblivious to a scramble of cabs, wagons, and motors at
cross purposes in the street. Potsdamer Platz presents a