Skeletons out of Cupboards
The Government's decision to use the Coronation as an occa- sion for granting a general amnesty to men who deserted from the armed services during th% last war is a sensible one. The total—on paper—of those who will benefit from this act of clemency is roughly 13,000, the vast majority being deserters from the Army. The actual number must be slightly smaller than this, for some have re-enlisted under another name and some, presumably, have died. Many of the men are Irishmen, who have long since returned to the immunity of their home- land; and the increasingly perfunctory efforts of the police to bring the remainder to book have latterly achieved little. Several thousand skeletons can now come out of several thousand cupboards", where. in many cases their presence has tainted the lives of the deserters' innocent dependents; and the fact that everyone who wants the amnesty is required to claim it in writing, thereby admitting his guilt to higher authority, should generally have a good psychological effect. Society is not likely to be tempted, because of the amnesty, to modify its abhorrence of men who in effect betrayed their comrades in time of war, and incidentally broke an oath in doing so: but everyone knows how often there were mitigating circumstances and how often young men were driven into a dishonourable course by some domestic crisis. Many will already have been sufficiently punished by the burden of anxiety and fear which is now lifted from them; and almost all the rest would have continued to evade punishment anyhow. •
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