should raise all elected officials' salaries steadily over a period of several years.

State legislators are subject to the same comments. How are they going to stand up to the pressure groups' high-priced lobbyists when they themselves are in such a weak economic plight?

Still, hard as is the legislators' lot, a point at which mischief can arise lies nearer home. It is the individual police officer whom we should scrutinize, even as we are taking a wholesome interest in politics generally.

RIGHTS AND DUTIES

Every policeman is a walking question mark. Of two things, one: either he is a responsible official or else he is a usurper. If he serves from a sense of duty and dedication and is zealous in every one of the law's particulars he is a citizen par excellence and should be given approbation and cooperation by the good citizens of the land.

If the policeman be the right kind of man, though, he will not have been satisfied to mumble his oath or affirmation of office as a part of an empty ceremony, a meaningless ritual. No, as Article VI, paragraph 3, of the constitution binds him to support the constitution, he will have read that constitution and have studied its application to his office. If he didn't read the constitution, doesn't know its provisions and doesn't intend to live up to it he is a liar and a perjurerand, as a usurper of authority, he is just as much a criminal as a Russian spy or saboteur.

There can be no such thing as a disinterested policeman: either he knows the law or he does not (and he has the responsibility of determining which laws are valid and which void because in conflict with the constitution) and either he intends to enforce the law or he does not.

The policeman who says "I only work here" is a hired killer.

No more than anybody else has a policeman a right to do anything unlawful. It is the right and duty of the policeman, as it is the right and duty of every citizen (and the policeman has oftener occasion) to say, "This thing is in accord with the constitution and this other thing is not." Constitutionality is not a thing that must always be carried to the supreme court before it can be decided. The constitution requires the lowest civilservice messenger to swear or affirm that he will support the constitution: it logically follows that the constitution is understandable by a person of ordinary attainments.

Our constitution is written in the plainest language and is remarkably simple and consistent. There is no excuse for the policeman who panders to that element in the citizenry which tries to make the government enforce church law.

If a policeman's lot is not a happy one it is chiefly because as he walks down the street every person looks at him and wonders, "Hero or heel?" He must be the one thing or the other, for there is no middle ground.

It is the policeman's responsibility that he arrest only such persons as are guilty of behavior prescribed by a constitutionally sound law-and of course there are many laws on the statute books' pages that will not stand a constitutional test. The policeman has promised to support the constitution: he must not enforce an unconstitutional law.

When a policeman enforces an unconstitutional law it is not the state that is responsible for the wrong done: the state can not do anything illegal, Anything illegal that is done is done on the responsibility, the personal responsibility, of some person. We who cherish our freedom should take steps