Timely Topics

Northern Advocate, 1 March 1939, Page 6

Timely Topics

There have been many indications in the last three months that under the pressures generated by the Sep-

tember crisis Ameri-

CLOSER TO can opinion was movEUROPE. ing rapidly away from

an isolationist base, says the “Christian Science Monitor.” Careful observers have reported that |?y radio the Middle West got far closer to Prague in 1938 than the eastern seaboard did to Brussels in 1914. The general approval of President Roosevelt’s intervention before Munich; the new awareness that ideals of freedom and tolerance cam not be defended by Britain and France alone; the warm response to the Eden visit; popular support for diplomatic and arms measures to re- | sist totalitarian expansion—all these are further signs. I K 1 ® Bf.„. S . ....

“The Times,” discussing the Criminal Justice Bill, and replyihg do critics who support retention of • cor- , poral punishment by

; CORPORAL Court sentence, pays: PUNISHMENT. The present ‘ powers of corporal punishment cannot be fitted into the penal system of the Bill, or indeed into any system. They constitute a ramshaci kle commemoration of forgotten | panics—the “white slavery”! panic of “1912, the garrotting scare of 1862, the ? public indignation over the lunatics | who 'aimed pistols at Queen Victoria iin the ’forties, and the apprehension of European war should debt-collec-tors be allowed to dun the ambassadors accredited to Queen Anne. The inclusion of the keeping of an

unlicensed horse-knacker’s yard does net do much to harmonise the list of crimes for which a mhn may be flogged. Clearly, if the lash were to retained, it would be necessary to sweep away this list and draw up another, framed on some coherent principle.

But, however the flogging system might be made consistent with itself, its inconsistency with the system of the Bill would ren\ain glaring. Flogging is a purely deterrent 1 punishment; and the bill seeks in every case to combine deterrency with reform. The experience of prison pfficers shows that, difficult as must always be the task of reclaiming the de-

praved characters for whom flogging is said to be appropriate, it is still more difficult after the lash Was! rendered the crinjinai sullen and bitter.