The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 1914. LORD ROBERT CECIL'S SCHEME.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 48, 18 June 1914, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 1914. LORD ROBERT CECIL'S SCHEME.

The plan of deportation for suffragette criminals, who may be arrested and convicted for outrages such as those committed of late, as introduced by Lord Robert Cecil was pronounced impracticable by Mr MeKenna. Lord Cecil's proposal was certainly novel and perhaps drastic, and would have meant treating these women, and those who aid and abet them in their criminal acts, differently from other offenders under the laws of Britain, but they are certainly unlike other offenders against the law and already we have inebriate homes, industrial schools, reformatories, and the indeterminate sentence for special classes of evil-doers, so that a new departure on account of this particular section of offenders against the public poaco and well-being might be allowable. Lord Robert Cecil does not see why the Courts should not be empowered to sentence suffragette offenders to deportation to some more or less distant island, and once there leave them at large, only preventing them from returning to Great Britain. Food and lodging would be offered them, but no compulsion would be put upon them to accept it. They would not bo in any sense imprisoned or depriyed of their liberty, sare in the on© respect mentioned. The Government would be no more responsible for their health or wellbeing than for that of any other inhabitant of the island. On the other hand, a senteucv of deportation should be of long duration—probably not less than a year, the author of the scheme suggests. It would be politically, though not physically, a severe penalty. The women themselves could have no rightto object to it, for it would be treating them like prisoners of war. That, at any rate, it t-ho opinion Lord Cecil holds, but, a* already stated, it was

not at all favorably received by the Government.