I am all for prison reform, and for enlightenment in
the treatment of criminals, but it is rather easy to slip over the border into sentimentality and indulgence. When I read, as I did on Tuesday, that a revolution in our prison methods has already begun—" it is demonstrated by little things like hot water for shaving "—I feel a slight sensation of disgust. Are brutes who cosh postmistresses over the head to have hot shaving-water, and for all I know hot-water bottles, brought them ? I have often shaved quite effectively in cold water, and if prison is to include any element of discomfort at all it might be permitted to include that one. As I read the accounts of coshing by young brutes in the papers day after day I lose every scrap of sympathy with the reformers who plead that these misguided young people should in no circumstances be made to feel physical pain themselves. I think they should be made to feel a lot. If the Lord Chief Justice is right in saying that men who have had the cat are regarded as something of heroes, then let the favoured implement be the birch.
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