THE NAUGHTY BOYS OF THE ARMY

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3149, 30 July 1917, Page 6

THE NAUGHTY BOYS OF THE ARMY

EX-CONVICTS IN THE FIRING ONE

THREE VICTORIA CROSS HEROES

(By Edwin Pugh, in the Daily Mail. )■ Soon after the war broke ont tlierffwas an idea in the air that it might not bo altogether a bad thing to release certain, inmates of our prisons and send them out to the front It was argued that by thus allowing them to light lor. their King and country they would be. given a chance to redeem' their past and. regain their self-respect Against this: proposition it was urged that the sol--diers of the new Army would most, strongly and quite reasonably object to. having" to consort with criminals. So the idea was apparently dropped. Anvway we heard no more about it until a little .while ago when it » » officially announced that over _ -000 out of 15,000 convicts and other minor misdemeanants had been Permitted to volunteer for active service, and that the vast majority of them had made gj.od One assumes that they were first of all tramed and drilled in separate bodies iinde, special supervision and then drafted into various regiments as if they hod been, ordinary recruits, their .new ™mj ade - ; knowing nothing of their antecedents, themselves free of the stigma and reproach that would otherwiso ht.ve attached to them as "gaolbirds/ Even so tlis would seem at first blush to have been an extremely hazardous experiment, only to he justified by its success. Further consideration of the matter, based on a. fuller knowledge of the facts, tends to. prove, however, that the authorities wer»-not taking such terrible risks aftei all, that they knew full well what they were at, and had certain data to go upon which would in a measure have justified their action even if the experiment had turned out a comparative failure And of course, every precaution was taken to. make it a success. . . This fact was forthcoming m the annual report of the Chief Inspector of Reformatories and Industrial Schools pSed towards the end of 1915. From' this report it appeared that, leaving out a considerable number of winger boy* organised to assist m munition-making, 1457 older hoys-youths and young men-had been enlisted direct various institutions in the Navy and! Irmv, while an additional 2684 i.ad been enlisted on license or under supervision making a grand total of over 4000 in tho two arms of the service, \ careful record extending over eight months was kept of the behaviour and cToings of tliese so-called ne'er-do-weels. K had its darker as well as its bngb W sule To tafe the darker rid* first: !»«► killed in action, 49 died of wounds, 13. died of sickness, and 1530 were more or le£ seriously wounded >rom this, it: will be seen that more than half of. them gave their lives or suffered some grievous hurt in their country's cause. Now to take the brighter side of the record: 20 were mentioned m dispatches, 25 received the D.C.M. S were Given commissions, and 3 received the \ .U Deducting from this list who ™e "i----inr<-d or otherwise incapacitated, we turn, that between 2 and 3 ner cent of theselads achieved some hjgh distinction-:* truly marvellous result, unexcelled, if not unparalleled, by the record of any other regiment engaged in this war. No wo idor, then, that on this showing the authorities felt justified beforehand in extending the same privileges that tlie> had granted these naughty boys so as to include those other more hardened sinners of maturer years. Now et us set besides these facts and figures tho current statistics, winch wonld seem to prove that there has been a great increase in juvenile crime lately. . Does it mean that there is a new spirit ot lawlessness abroad which has so infected the younger generation that they nave, become more wicked than they used to. 9 i think not. I think" that if we call this new spirit a spirit of adventure rather than a spirit of lawlessness we small get nearer the twith. I think that it is more often tins higher spirit, born of misguided courage and mistaken enterprise, than any sordid desire of mere gain that impels boys to kick over the traces, incites men first of nil to n»ltr offences, and at last launches tljeirt irrecoverably on a career of crime.