5 OCTOBER 1945, Page 4

* * * * • The Home Secretary's decision to

send Borstal boys to Dartmoor really will not do. Public opinion will compel him to change it Dartmoor is not merely a convict prison, it is the bye-word among convict prisons. I know it inside and out, for I went over it several times in the pre-war years. Nothing could make it anything but for- bidding, depressing, menacing. Any boy's character would de- teriorate in such suroundings. And to announce this on the eve of a Dartmoor winter, when the moor is wrapped in fog for weeks together, makes the thing more incredible than ever. Mr. Ede deserves sympathy in his endeavour to find accommodation for Borstal boys, but he must discover something better than this.