The law and the practice of the administration of criminal justice everywhere in the civilized world is one of the most characteristic features of the historic development and the actual conditions of a nation. One may fairly say that if one knows the law and the practice of criminal justice of a particular country, he knows a good deal of its political conditions and of the ideas prevailing in that country for the time being. So in Germany, criminal justice is very closely connected with German historical development and with the very character of German life of to-day, and for this reason German criminal justice is quite a different matter from criminal justice in the United States. Obedience to the laws of the state, and firm discipline conforming itself with these laws, are, in Germany, thought to be among the most needful things in public life. A king of Prussia at the beginning of the eighteenth century gave the keynote of his time and of all the future, till now, when he said in a quiet manner and in mixed French and German, according to the custom of the time: Ich will den Staat stabiliren wie einen rocher de bronze. (I will establish the authority of the laws of the state like a rock of brass.) There has developed in Germany a very refined and very powerful machinery of criminal procedure, built up to punish relentlessly all acts of disobedience against the laws, atrocious crimes as well as petty offenses. A numerous body of public attorneys, very well disciplined and subject to the control of the government in fact, as well as by law, is inquiring with unceasing energy into all unlawful acts. Whenever there is suspicion that a crime has been committed, the public prosecutor never fails to make cn investigation into the facts. The outcome of this system has been a natural one. Statistics show that the totals of punishment in Germany surpass by far the totals of other, nay, perhaps, of all other countries. Due attention being given to population, the German totals of punishment exceed by more than three fold those of England. In the trial, which is an inquisitorial one, the prisoner has not the right of a free man presumed to be innocent. Urged by the court in accordance with the law of procedure to be a witness against himself and unprotected by the constitution, he is a poor object of inquisition, out of