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.