contains a good bibliography for beginners, to which there are only a few additions to be made:—Geoffrey Drage, “Pre-war Statistics of Poland and Lithuania,” published in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (March 1918); Bruce Boswell, Poland and the Poles (1920); Ralph Butler, The New Eastern Europe (1919); Erasmus Pilz, Poland (1916); Askenazy, Danzig and Poland; Bass, The Peace Tangle (1921); Mandell House Seymour, What Really happened at Paris (1921); Pernot, L'épreuve de la Pologne; Report by Sir Stuart Samuel on his Mission to Poland (Cmd. 674), 1920.
(G. Dr.)
POLICE (United States).—An interesting recent development as regards police in the United States has been the establishment in certain states of a state police, sometimes called constabulary. This body acts under state rather than local authority, is usually organized on a military basis, is widely distributed for patrol duty, but can be quickly mobilized for emergencies. Such forces are of special service for protecting life and property in country districts, made accessible to robbers and assassins by the introduction of the automobile. Since the adoption of national prohibition much of their time has been spent in suppressing illegal liquor traffic.
The largest state police force is that of Pennsylvania, consisting in 1920 of 415 officers and men. It was organized in 1905 somewhat after the model of the Canadian Northwest police. It is composed of five troops with posts in different parts of the state. Detachments are sent out to the 40 stations and from the stations small patrols operate in every direction. The posts and stations are in constant communication, and help can be rushed immediately to any point. They are empowered to make arrests for any violation of the law; at the same time they act as fish and game wardens and as fire patrols. When practicable they cooperate with the local authorities in preserving order. In some states their powers are somewhat restricted; in New York they cannot enter a city to suppress a riot unless so ordered by the governor or on request of the mayor with the approval of the governor. But in any state they may pursue a criminal and arrest him anywhere. In Pennsylvania applicants for appointment who have served in the army, navy or militia are given preference. The recruit serves a probation period of four months and makes a study of the state laws. The period of enlistment is two years. Another type of state police is seen in South Dakota, where the sheriffs and deputy-sheriffs form a state constabulary “for the purpose of detecting crime, apprehending criminals, suppressing riots, preventing affrays, and preserving and enforcing law and order throughout the state.” In Idaho all state, county and municipal officers form a state constabulary under the direct control of the commissioner of the department of law enforcement. A third type is seen in the Massachusetts District Police, consisting of a detective and an inspection department. Appointments are made by the governor and his council. At the governor's command they suppress disorder anywhere in the state. They do not maintain a patrol. In 1920 a state police, or constabulary, was maintained in 12 states: Massachusetts, Texas, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New York, South Dakota, Michigan, Idaho, New Mexico, Tennessee, and West Virginia. At that time several other states were considering the establishment of such forces.
A special committee on state and metropolitan police, appointed by the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, in a report submitted in 1920 urged active cooperation “in educating the people, and especially the Legislatures of their respective states, with respect to the nature, methods, and value of a state police force.”
See this committee's report, “Metropolitan and State Police,” in the Journal of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, vol. XL, No. 3 (Nov. 1920). An excellent account of the largest and best organized of the state police forces is given by Kathenne Mayo in Justice to All: The Story of the Pennsylvania State Police (1917), with an introduction by Theodore Roosevelt.
POLLIO, ALBERTO (1852–1914), Italian general, was born at Caserta on April 21 1852. Before he was nine years old he entered the Naples military college, and he received his commission as a sub-lieutenant of artillery in April 1870. He served with distinction in various posts, and in June 1908 he was appointed chief of the Italian general staff, a position which he retained till his sudden death on July 1 1914. Pollio acquired, a wide reputation as a writer on military subjects, his chief works being on Waterloo and Custozza. Both these books were translated into various languages.
POOR LAW, in the United Kingdom (see 22.74).—During the decade following the publication of the Royal Commission's Reports in 1909 the English Poor Law system underwent some minor administrative reforms. The commissioners had laid bare many crying scandals, and their reasoned indictment of the whole system aroused immediate and wide-spread interest. An agitation was set on foot, and actively prosecuted for several years by the partisans of the Minority Report, who demanded the complete abolition of the Poor Law. Many M.P.'s, irrespective of party, were pledged to this, and the public generally was prepared for drastic legislation. It was expected that the Government would presently take the matter up, when the outbreak of the World War in 1914 shelved the question. Meanwhile the Reports and the agitation begun in 1910 could not be entirely ignored by the Poor Law authorities themselves. Mr.
John Burns, the President of the Local Government Board, though a staunch defender of the Poor Law, was bound to admit that some amendments were necessary. But these, he claimed, could be carried out by his own department. What was wanted was not, as he put it, “reform by revolution, but revolution by reform in administration.” The administrative revolution, however, did not produce any startling changes. A new Relief Regulation Order was issued, which did a little to improve the administration of outdoor relief, but left the fundamental objections untouched. Another Order (Poor Law Institutions Order 1913) was designed to consolidate the regulations governing indoor relief. This, too, effected slight improvements in classification, the quality of the nursing service, the paupers' dietaries and so on. It also insisted on the removal of children over three years of age from the general mixed workhouse into separate institutions or quarters. But many of the boards of guardians were apathetic, or openly defiant of the central authority, and a steady pressure was required to reduce the numbers of these children, whose condition had been shown by the Royal Commission in 1909 to be peculiarly scandalous. During the war this pressure was relaxed, and in 1921 there was still a residue of children between 3 and 16 years of age (besides the infants under 3) living in the general workhouse wards. In 1911 a Boarding-out Order emphasized the need of closer supervision and more adequate allowances for the pauper children lodged in private houses with “foster-parents.” There was also an attempt made to deal with the problem of vagrancy in London, by putting all the casual wards of the Metropolis under the control of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, cooperating with the police and various philanthropic agencies. And rather late in the rest of the country most of the boards of guardians
combined in county vagrancy committees, for the better co-ordination of their treatment of the tramps. “Way-tickets” and bread-stations were established, a number of casual wards were closed, and expenses were pooled. But these reforms scarcely amounted to a revolution, either in their conception or in their effects.
Of the later developments only two are of any importance. The Representation of the People Act 1917 removed the disfranchisement which had been one of the chief stigmata of pauperism. Hitherto the receipt of parish relief (other than medical relief only) “within the twelve months next preceding the last day of July in each year” haddisqualifiedd a man or woman from being registered as a voter. Now anyone may vote, provided he is not actually an inmate of a Poor Law institution at the moment of the election. In 1919 the Local Government Board ceased to exist, and was succeeded as the central Poor Law authority by the newly created Ministry of Health. This change made no outward difference, but it was generally taken to foreshadow a thorough reform of the Poor Law system, and the Ministry of Health Act 1919, sect. 3 (3), actually contains the significant words: “in the event of provision being made by Act of Parliament ... for the revision of the law relating to the relief of the poor and the distribution amongst
