Foster's Daily Democrat

Famous Detectives
England has produced many famous detectives, but notwithstanding the skill of the present Scotland Yard officials and their immediate predecessors they do not seem to hold anything like the record that American and French officials can produce. Even America would seem to rank second to France, where the system of espionage is of long standing. The intrigues of court, and notably of the French court in the middle ages, seem to have bred the detective spirit among Frenchmen, and today, as of old, it is a notorious fact that secret service is in vogue to immense dimensions. Men are followed everywhere and their movements watched. One does not know who may be a spy, and even in private circles a so called friend may be the agent of the government. This sort of thing constitutes the Frenchman as a natural detective, with the consequence that large numbers of them possess a remarkable facility for ferreting out criminals and political offenders. This also accounts for the acknowledged fact that crimes are more surely traced back to offenders there than they are here and elsewhere. The number of undiscovered crimes in England vastly exceeds that of France, notwithstanding the much larger population.-Brooklyn Citizen.