Occasionally it enables one to meet emergencies in the best possible fashion.

While I was Police Commissioner an anti-Semitic preacher from Berlin, Rector Ahlwardt, came over to New York to preach a crusade against the Jews.

Many of the New York Jews were much excited and asked me to prevent him from speaking and not to give him police protection.

This, I told them, was impossible; and if possible would have been undesirable because it would have made him a martyr.

The proper thing to do was to make him ridiculous.