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Otautau Standard and Wallace County Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 314, 9 May 1911, Page 2

' The Scottish Prison Commissioners, m their report, ISO 9, just published, deplore the fact that 81,000 convictions m Scotland m 1909 (being half the total number for all offences) Avere due to drunkenness. " There is urgent need," they say, " for a revision of our system of dealing with these cases. The. present method of fine or imprisonment is neither deterrent nor curative." Upon which Mr Walter East, hon. secretary of the National Independent Temperance Society, remarks that tha Scottish Prison Commissioners appear to have overlooked the Probation Act, the " total abstinence " section of which gives them exactly the better system for which they ask. But for various reasons this beneficent Act is not administered as fully as it should be. Magistrates, either m mistaken kindness, condone altogether a first offence of drunkenness, or inflict a fine. Neither method is deterrent nor curutive, because it does v nothing to restrain the offender from future drinking ; but the- firm application of the abstinence condition to all first offenders for drunkenness has already proved itself both deterrent and curative, Judge Wallace, K.C., and many magistrates having reformed a large number of drunken offenders by this method.

A doctor's wife, whose husband secured from the Paris Court an order for the restitution of conjugal rights, -will have to pay £4 for every day that she delays m obeying the order.

it is two centuries since the sweet pea was introduced m Great Britain.