A Prison Reformer
Paterson on Prisons. Being the collected papers of Sir Alexander Paterson. Edited by S. K. Ruck, with a foreword by the Rt. Hon. C. R. Attlee, P.C., M.P. (Frederick Muller. Ifs.) ALEC PATERSON'S views on the ultimate purpose of education—not merely prison education—are given on p. 117 of this book. Amongst other qualities to be developed he mentions " balance," and he writes: " We seek to produce men and women who are not blown about, but stand on the bridge and direct their own lives, unifying and harmonising all they do by the intelligent contemplation of certain ends and the steady following of certain ideals." So he himself stood, erect and certain, directed, harmonised, contemplated and followed ; or, if you are a determinist or what Paterson called " an amateur pessimist," you will at least agree that he appeared to do all these things.
When, by good fortune and the imaginative administration of Maurice Waller as Chairman of the Prison Commission, Paterson was loosed upon the squalid, rigid prison system of 1922 he turned it upside-down. Masterful, dynamic, idealist, he did this by his power of inspiring others—all sorts and conditions of men—with his own faith and of attracting to the prison service, and especially tc the Borstal service, a host of young men who, abandoning care for money and worldly success, have given heart and mind and body to the god-like work of re-creating warped, miserable and mutilated lives. There are governors, housemasters and officers in Borstals, prisons and in colonial penal administrations, who hold in their memories the stuff of Paterson's life and dreams. They should write it down before it is too late, that it may be the staple of Paterson's biography.
This book will be of secondary use in providing raw material. There are plums in it, but it is plum jam insufficiently boiled and therefore showing signs of mould already. The various memoranda and articles hold wisdom and valuable ideas expressed with pun- gency, wit and candour, for Paterson was a fine journalist—lost to Fleet Street. But these papers are undated, except in a list of sources, and without sufficient editorial notes on subsequent happen- ings. They are thus occasionally misleading. One hopes that Paterson's friends in Belgium and Scandinavia and other countries, which know neither. hanging nor flogging, will not read this book. There are incidentally three footnotes on three separate pages refer- ring the reader to page 19, which turns out to bear three words only " Paterson on Prisons."
Some of the best plums are in appendices—" Give or Get "; " A Highway Code " (advice to prison officers taking senior posts in the colonies) ; " Smike: A Soldier and a Man " and " A Borstal Camp in Burma." This last ends with a picture of the camp cook—" a young dacoit of burly figure and engaging mien—always to the fore when work is done—a wag and a leader throughout the day. Hoarsely he urges on his team, saying with the pleasant assurance of the competent athlete, It's no use my playing well ; you must all play well.' " It is a parable crystal clear to those who value Alec Paterson's gift to his generation. CICELY M. CRAVEN.
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