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trouble; the governor of the prison is worried with comparatively few complaints. Yet-this is the awkward fact-no sooner is the convict out of prison than he repeats his offence. The writer remembers being present at a service in the chapel of one of our largest convict prisons. "What did you think of it?" asked the Governor afterwards. "The best-behaved congregation and the most devout service I ever saw," answered the writer. "Yes, I know," said the Governor, "but these men have all been here before, and the worst of it is they will all be here again." These men are the problem. The State should not be put to continual expense and trouble on their account and yet we shall all be agreed that the thought of indefinite imprisonment on the ordinary lines is horrible. The mind shrinks from it. The punishment would be greater than the sin.

What is this preventive detention of which we have heard so much lately, but which no man has yet experienced? And exactly to what class of habitual offenders is it to apply? Preventive detention can follow only upon a sentence of at least three years' penal servitude. That we knew two years ago. But there are over two hundred convicts already in prison who are sentenced to preventive detention at the end of their term of ordinary penal servitude, and we now know for the first time to what they have to look forward. Frankly, we had hoped it would be possible to provide for some sort of not disagreeable detention which would be regarded not in the usual sense as imprisonment but (if we may draw such a distinction) as a condition of "not being let out again." In saying this we do not lean at all to the sentimental view. The sentence of penal servitude should be adequate to the crime, and the idea of punishment would be exhausted with its termination. After that the criminal

would be only kept out of harm's way.' That is our ideal. We recognize the enormous difficulties of it, and we notice that the Home Secretary has felt unable to try to reach it. During the last two years there has evidently been vast confusion as to what preventive detention meant-as to how the blank cheque of 1908 was to be filled in. Consider, for example, the familiar figure of the gentle shepherd of Dartmoor, who seems to be a very agreeable person to meet but whose hands are never under control when he comes into the neighborhood of a church money-box. When he was sentenced to three years' penal servitude plus ten years of detention, most of us thought of him, perhaps, as destined merely to be kept out of harm's way-in the condition, as we have put it, of not being let out. But Mr. Churchill had another interpretation of the Act in his mind, and consequently took the shepherd away from prison altogether and "placed" him on a farm, with the result we all know. We come now to Mr. Churchill's definition of preventive detention:

"It should be clearly understood," says the draft, "that no modification of the conditions which prevail in convict prisons can alter the essential fact that preventive detention is a form of imprisonment. Several hundred criminals of the most skilful and determined class will have to be confined for considerable periods within prison walls, and to be controlled by a staff which cannot be made very numerous without undue expense. During their detention they must always be either within locked cells or under close supervision; discipline must be firmly maintained, and hard work enforced. If there were neglect or relaxation in the supervision and discipline, it would inevitably lead to escape, or mutiny, or vice. . . It appears a matter of much importance that this should be clearly understood and that the idea should not grow up that preventive de

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criminal who is an "habitual" through mental defect, or some imperfect faculty of moral resistance, is not to be subject to the new rules at all. They are reserved for the treatment of criminals who are a "danger" rather than a "nuisance" to society-men who commit crime deliberately while they are in possession of a sound mind in a sound body. These men are defined as "professionals." Stress is laid, in fact, upon the criminologist's distinction between habituals and professionals. Lord Gladstone used the general word "habituals," and, though Mr. Churchill quotes Lord Gladstone's speeches to show that he really meant "professionals," we cannot help feeling that the speeches of 1908 might have been interpreted differently if Mr. Churchill had felt differently. The police have evidently been acting for two years in the dark, and Mr. Churchill now admits that new instructions are necessary if the Act is to have any uniform value throughout the kingdom. No one is to be proposed to the Public Prosecutor (from whom ultimately the sanction must come) for preventive detention, unless he is thirty years old, has already undergone penal servitude, and is charged anew with a substantial and serious offence. In fine, under this exceptional means of protecting society, though the professional criminal's punishment will not increase in rigor, it will undoubtedly The Spectator.

be more severe in the sense that it will be much longer.

Prisoners undergoing preventive detention will be divided into three grades-ordinary, special, and disciplinary:

After every six months passed in the ordinary grade with exemplary conduct, a prisoner who has shown zeal and industry in the work assigned to him may be awarded a certificate of industry and conduct. Four of these certificates will entitle him to promotion to the special grade. With each certificate a prisoner will receive a good-conduct stripe carrying privileges or a small money payment.

If a prisoner misbehaves he may be thrust down into the disciplinary grade. Prisoners will receive gratuities for the trade at which they work, and may spend their money on small luxuries at a canteen, or may send it to their families, or may save it. Those who have got three certificates may have a garden allotment, and may sell the produce for the use of the prison at market rates. Prisoners in the ordinary and special grades will be allowed to talk at meals and in the evenings, and have "additional relaxations of a literary and social character" according to the number of their certificates.

The whole scheme leaves untouched the criminal who is most of all a charge upon one's pity-the person without a moral sense, who is not insane enough for Broadmoor, but who preys upon Society the moment he is released from prison. According to Mr. Churchill's interpretation of the Act of 1908, the Dartmoor shepherd should never have been sentenced to preventive detention. Is it impossible to segregate men like him without inflicting on them the hardships of preventive detention, as it is now defined? One would suppose them to be manageable, and therefore the objection that a large staff would be required would not hold good.

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Dr. William Burnett Wright's "The Heart of the Master" is a fresh, reverent and suggestive study of the events of Passion Week, which would attract the attention of thoughtful readers at any time, but is especially timely when the Christian world is approaching the annual observance of that most sacred season. Dr. Wright's visits to Palestine have made him familiar with the scenes through which the Saviour of men moved to the culmination of His sacrifice, and this enables him to impart a vivid local coloring to his narrative. But more important than this is his penetrating spiritual insight which gives a new meaning to little-regarded details, and puts a new interpretation upon certain incidents-such as the entry into Jerusalem and the last cry of Jesus from the cross which, to a superficial view, are full of difficulty. Houghton Mifflin Company.

To tell the story of English history from the Roman conquest to the accession of King George V. and the federation of the South African colonies, within the limits of less than three hundred pages of moderate size is the by no means easy task which Henry W. Elson essays in his "A Guide to English History" but his courage in undertaking the task is not more surprising than his success in it. He has a clear style and an unusual sense of proportion, and, writing for young readers, for it is to the "Guide Series" for young readers that this is the latest addition-he contrives in each period to seize upon the salient points and the most striking and significant incidents. The boy or girl who reads this book with even moderate attention will obtain from it a clear idea of

the general course of the development of the English people, for which later reading may supply an indefinite amount of detail. Sixteen maps and illustrations add to the value and attractiveness of the book. The Baker & Taylor Company.

One addition more to the lengthening list of novels with a socio-economic purpose is "The Lever," in which William Dana Orcutt, author of "The Spell," imagines the career of an enormous trust, "the most gigantic piece of promotion engineering the world has seen," founded upon an altruistic basis, under the leadership of a man who combines with marvellous practical ability the optimism of an idealist. The machinations of lesser rivals against the "Consolidated Companies," the effect of attempted legislation upon it, and the attitude toward it of a certain President of the United States who holds to "a discrimination between good and bad trusts" are realistically described, and the chapters leading up to the climax are exceptionally interesting. Mr. Orcutt's women are not so successful as his men, and the wife and daughter of his great promoter, though they add variety to his pages, do not really live. But Robert Gorham himself is a striking figure, and his story points in an effective way a lesson in which the public of to-day feels the keenest possible interest. Harper & Brothers.

To fully appreciate the importance and the personnel of the new literary movement in Germany, the influence of which is being felt more and more in this country, one will find a valuable aid in reading Percival Pollard's volume, "Masks and Minstrels of New

Germany," just issued by John W. Luce and Company. Here will be found an intimate first hand view of Herman Bahr whose play, "The Concert," is a noteworthy New York success; Ernest Von Wolzogen, who is now visiting America as the guest of German literary societies and our leading universities; Baroness Von Wolzogen, who has given fashionable entertainments in New York this winter; Schmitzler, the author of "The Green Cockatoo," "The Episode," and "The Farewell Supper"; Oscar Straus, composer of "The Chocolate Soldier" and "The Waltz Dream," who has written songs for the "Green Germans" as they are called; Victor Hollander, who composed the "Swing Song"; Wedekind, who wrote "The Awakening of Spring," and other plays in which he enacts a leading role; and Von Hoffmansthal, the librettist of Richard Strauss' "Salome," "Elecktra," and "Rosencavalier," the latter of which was produced in Dresden, January 25th of this year.

Dickens-lovers, in this Dickens year, of all years, will assuredly welcome Mr. G. K. Chesterton's delightful "Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens" (E. P. Dutton & Co.). It is true that all of these twenty-four papers, with the exception of the general Introduction which precedes the essays devoted to particular books, have appeared before as introductions to the separate volumes of Charles Dickens's writings, in "Everyman's" edition. But by no means all Dickens lovers possess that particular edition of his writings; and it would be hard upon them if they were forced to find shelf-room for another edition of Dickens in order to obtain access to Mr. Chesterton's characteristic essays. They are spared this necessity by the grouping of the papers in the present volume, with the general introduction

prefixed. To say clever and startling things comes as easily to Mr. Chesterton as breathing; yet, with all his humor and his whimsicalness he can be serious when he chooses. Through these essays, besides the illuminating and sympathetic comment upon particular books and characters, there runs a deep appreciation of the motives which prompted the great novelist, and the significance of the work which he did. The book may well find its place beside any set of Dickens's writings in any library; for no reader of Dickens can fail to enjoy it. Eight portraits of Dickens, at different periods. between 1840 and 1868, illustrate it.

In "How Leslie Loved," Anne Warner describes the experiences of a coquettish young American widow, bewildered in the choice of her second husband by an embarrassment of riches. They include a week-end at an English priory with acrostics for entertainment; a "real English Christmas" in a chilly inn with a party of casual acquaintances "thoroughly American and thoroughly hospitable," as the hostess is fond of sayingwhose chief solicitude is for the wellbeing of their dog, the Earl of Arran, but from whose impertinence she only escapes by a make-believe betrothal to another of their guests; a series of visits to a fortune-teller in Hammersmith; a stay in a "real schloss," where a wedding impends and one chimney after another is being opened as the Grafin learns the increasing number of her inevitable guests; a few days at an impossible pension; and a happy ending in Berlin. The story is sprightly and entertaining, and almost wholly free from such passages in broad farce as spoiled "The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary" for the fastidious among Miss Warner's admirers; and it will beguilea dull hour very pleasantly: Little Brown & Co.

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