Stiffening-up
A Judge sitting at Assizes one day this week said, in sentencing stealers of machine-tools to long terms of imprisonment, that if he could he would have passed a death-sentence. There are those who have suggested a like penalty for persons guilty of " black-market " offences—trafficking illegally in controlled articles. The .Home Secretary, in announcing the strengthening of the Defence. Regulations applicable to such cases, has not gone as far as that, but he has gone satisfactorily far. The penalties to which guilty persons are liable are to be one year's imprison- ment on summary conviction and 14 years' penal servitude on indictment. Fines can be imposed in addition, and it is empha- sised that they must be at least sufficient to exceed any profit the offender may have been shown to have made out of the trans- action. Such an increase of penalties is to be wholeheartedly welcomed, and it is to be hoped that sentences on this scale will soon be passed and given wide publicity. At the same time, other measures designed to prepare the nation for meeting its dangers in different fields are announced. The disappearance of the white loaf in a few weeks will be distasteful—though the effect on health will be beneficial rather than otherwise—but it will relieve shipping at a time when the pressure on shipping is almost in- tolerable. In addition, compulsion to join the Home Guard is to be applied to men up to 51 years of age over the whole of Southeria England. All these are steps in the right direction, and more steps—notably the prohibition of extravagant meals—are needed yet. The nation must be placed, far too late in the day, on a war-footing.
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