[From a Correspondent, in the Times, London, England]

A man's honesty comes to its most acute testing not in his relation to others, but in his dealings with himself. Many who maintain as if by nature a scrupulous rectitude in all their business and social relations habitually fail in candor to themselves. The results are often disastrous, and not less because their source is often unrecognized....

One cause of the prevalent misconception of self arises from the fact that we note the faults of others, not without exaggeration, and then compare these not with our own faults, which we ignore, but with our virtues, and thus decide entirely in our own favor, thus encouraging a self-satisfaction which robs us of any chance of moral progress. Through this dishonesty with ourselves we lose all the joy that comes to those who, recognizing their deficiencies and being penitent for their misdoings, make disciplined efforts to acquire higher qualities of life and to achieve greater service to others. The worst feature of this self-delusion is not that we are certain to succeed in it, but that we become unable to see the good in others and end in contempt of all that is true and pure in human life.

Men may meet the judgment of conscience against themselves by a refusal to adopt the discipline which will help them to overcome evil. They shun what appears to be so humiliating, and invent excuses to palliate the evil they will not renounce. None of us entirely escapes from this subterfuge. Our wisdom is to refer ourselves to a higher tribunal than the standards of our fellows, or of our self-judgment, and to test our lives by those ideals which are expressed nowhere so clearly and so persuasively as in the Gospels. The Christian finds in this appeal to the ideal not only a motive for attempting to attain it, but a force of life which makes him a participant of that true character which he earnestly desires to attain. In finding out the truth about God men learn the truth about themselves.

[Lewis E. Lawes, Warden of Sing Sing Prison, in the New York Times Magazine, New York]

Provided with the proper sinews of accomplishment, I see no reason why prisons should not turn out men better than they came in, wiser for their experiences, corrected in their views of life, more widely equipped to attain and retain their places in society and the desire to assume normal responsibilities....

In essence, prison terms should be based upon the prisoner's ability to make himself useful to society—the unskilled worker, to learn a trade; the illiterate, to acquire the education needed to hold a job; the wanderer, to find for himself a home and responsibility; the deficient mentality, to attain a better understanding of the values of life; the cynic and perverse, to win to a saner attitude toward society and government.

The transformation of men's minds and souls cannot be determined in advance.... But most cases will answer to proper treatment. For them we need institutions that will suit their needs and give society the best possible returns in rehabilitated men and women. These prisoners do not need hospitals. They do not need armed camps, or guns, or bludgeons. They need workshops and schools.

And that is what we should make of our prisons. Many prisoners have to learn to work, just as others have to learn their alphabet. Doing tasks rather than doing time must become the objective of every prisoner if our corrective measures are ever to serve their purposes.

Every task assigned to him should be treated with an eye toward vocational training. He must appreciate the importance of tasks well done in their relationship toward his physical well-being. In other words, he should be paid for his work, and the amount of his earnings ought to govern his mode of living within the walls, just as the worker outside the walls adjusts his life in accordance with his economic status. Every prisoner should be made to pay for his keep. Clothing, food, entertainment, and other incidentals should be charged against him and, in addition, a certain proportion of his earnings should be retained for the benefit of dependents.... As in an industrial plant, wages should be graded according to the importance of the job, so that ambitious workers would seek to improve themselves and rise to higher type work and greater responsibilities.

Like an industrial plant, the prison should be provided with the best possible machinery, so that prisoners may become accustomed to handle the kind of work they may be called upon to do after their discharge. There is no prison in the country to-day that can boast of anything but secondary outfits in most of its shops. The material used is old-fashioned. If we are to train a prisoner for normal life, everything within the prison must be made to conform with normal requirements.

A large proportion of our prisoners are lacking in fundamental education. The prison school system throughout the country is more or less haphazard. Facilities for study should be standardized to meet individual requirements. Some men, especially among the younger element, need ordinary book learning; others need special training for specific vocations.

Many prisoners subscribe to extension courses in various universities. Not all that would like to do this can afford the expense. I see no good reason why the State Education Department, through its board of regents, cannot supervise and control education within prisons and issue proper credentials to students who have successfully met its requirements. The man who has served his time, and who, in the judgment of the authorities, is competent to face the world with every chance of success, should not be deprived of the opportunities offered to men in ordinary walks of life.

There is no good reason why, under limitations, the man who has rebuilt himself in prison should be barred from civil service examinations or any other opportunities that are open to his fellows on the outside. You cannot expect to send a man out into the world and demand that he go straight if you close the door to employment for which he is fitted. Training the prisoner for normal life must be supplemented with provision for normal chances for right living....

I encourage decent correspondence.... Letters to wives, parents, or brothers and sisters, or male friends are encouraged. Who can say that these constant contacts are not helpful? ...

If prisoners want to laugh while they eat, let them. If they have the urge to discuss politics, or economics, or the latest talkie, or recent sport events, or even the prison menu, at the mess table, what harm is there in that? If wearing a tie helps them retain their self-respect, why not? If any popular radio number makes for kinship among the public at large, I want my men to be a part of that kinship. If depressed emotions can be revived by a baseball game or soothed by a game of checkers or chess or an occasional talking picture, why not supply those things that help to keep men normal? Certainly, if we are to return men to society we do want to send them out as normal human beings, keenly alive to all that is of interest to man and to the particular communities to which they are to return.

All this may not conform to the old dyed-in-the-wool theory of punishment. Aside from the thought, now generally conceded, that confinement is sufficient punishment in itself, is it not a fact that our main objective is the protection of society? What better protection can society expect than to ease the suffering of its wards and, at the same time, help them maintain the sense of living, the hope of building anew, and the conviction that there is happiness in normal conduct? Doing this, we shall turn out more men instead of more brutes; men who will leave the prison gates with steady step, determined to make good. And most of them will never return.

[F. C. Hoggarth, in Great Thoughts, London, England]

Paul, in prison in Rome, makes for himself another world in which he lives. He looks beyond the doors and bars. The letters that came out of his prison reveal his thoughts. No mark of the prison house is on them. The spaciousness of heaven is in them. His letter to the Philippians is not full of his trials or of the irksomeness and bitterness of his lot, chained to a Roman soldier. Paul's thoughts roam in a beautiful world—beyond bars, in "heavenly places."

His final message to that little group at Philippi is: To keep in mind whatever is true, worthy, just, pure, attractive, high-toned, all excellence, and all merit. The apostle practiced what he preached. Dark and bitter thoughts would knock at his door. The devils of gloom and cynicism are watchers in all prisons. With half Paul's raw material not a few would have found scope for cynicism and doubt. They would have arraigned heaven. A strange God is He who allows Paul a prison and Nero a throne! Paul had given no houseroom to such thoughts. He had made rigorous selection and built up his world of other material.... The greatest souls have known frustration. Schooled they were in discipline, but their lives were thereby glorified rather than spoiled.

Reading should be a permanent source of those things that are lovely and pure—a positive aid to our keeping them in mind. It should be a common ambition of youth to gather a little personal library that will serve in that way of strengthening idealism, of inspiring noble and radiant thoughts. Whatever gives low or trivial thoughts of life it is well to shun. Though we may be no worse to any outward seeming for seeing or reading some things, yet, all unknown, some thought may have stolen aboard that may prove a traitor in some critical hour.

It is a good thing to start and close each day with some noble thought, a motto, a verse of poetry, a psalm, something that belongs to the world of the beautiful. It is equally wise to see that the first day of the week gives tone to the other days, being dedicated to the quest of those same true and good and beautiful things. It is good, also, to be on the lookout for the grace of life, drawing it to us and so enriching the world in which we mentally live. The little tenement-dweller who resolved, even in her unideal surroundings, to see some beautiful thing each day, made a most wise choice.

[Rev. Dr. William Carter, in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, New York]

What the world needs to-day is less pessimism and more optimism; less fear and more faith. "Faith can remove mountains."