at the end of a rope. If this
war is to mean anything to posterity, the crime against humanity must be
judged in the future by the same rigid standard as the crime against the
person.

The individual criminals whose careers are given in this book have been
chosen from among their fellows for their pre-eminence in character or
achievement. Some of the cases, such as Butler, Castaing and Holmes, are
new to most English readers.

Charles Peace is the outstanding popular figure in nineteenth-century
crime. He is the type of the professional criminal who makes crime a
business and sets about it methodically and persistently to the end.
Here is a man, possessing many of those qualities which go to make the
successful man of action in all walks of life, driven by circumstances
to squander them on a criminal career. Yet it is a curious circumstance
that this determined and ruthless burglar should have suffered for what
would be classed in France as a "crime passionel." There is more than
a possibility that a French jury would have?? ing circumstances in the
murder of Dyson.?? Peace is only another instance of the wrecking a
man's career by his passion for a ???? bert Butler we have the criminal
by conviction, a conviction which finds the ground ready prepared
for its growth in the natural laziness and idleness of the man's
disposition. The desire to acquire things by a short cut, without taking
the trouble to work for them honestly, is perhaps the most fruitful of
all sources of crime. Butler, a bit of a pedant, is pleased to
justify his conduct by reason and philosophy--he finds in the acts of
unscrupulous monarchs an analogy to his own attitude towards life. What
is good enough for Caesar Borgia is good enough for Robert Butler. Like
Borgia he comes to grief; criminals succeed and criminals fail. In the
case of historical criminals their crimes are open; we can estimate the
successes and failures. With ordinary criminals, we know only those
who fail. The successful, the real geniuses in crime, those whose guilt
remains undiscovered, are for the most part unknown to us. Occasionally
in society a man or woman is pointed out as having once murdered
somebody or other, and at times, no doubt, with truth. But the matter
can only be referred to clandestinely; they are gazed at with awe or
curiosity, mute witnesses to their own achievement. Some years ago James
Payn, the novelist, hazarded the reckoning that one person in every five