A GREAT BRITAIN PLAN
Mr. Winston Churchill’s attempt to lighten the load which every discharged convict has as a handicap in his efforts to retrieve his position will be watched with much interest in all Anglo-Saxon countries. A new commission is to be organized, with the financial and moral backing of the government, for the purpose of uniting and directing the efforts of all societies which have as their common purpose the opening of opportunities for legitimate activity to men who have made a mistake and paid the penalty for it. The Home Secretary is to be at its head and, while its scope has not yet been and possibly never will be definitely delimited, it will make possible the abolition of police supervision which has been one of the almost insuperable obstacles in the path of every ex-prisoner who tried to live down his past in Great Britain. Police officers, as a rule, are too actively engaged in the militant work of fighting crime to be able to share in the task of rehabilitating the vanquished. We have not, in Canada, the problems in this connection which Great Britain has to solve but we have enough reasons for fearing that they will come with our rapid development to make our interest in the new movement more than an impersonal one.—Montreal (Que.) Star.