ABSTRACT
There was a period during the war when I associated habitually with criminals.2 I cannot say that I found anything peculiarly dislikeable about them. They fell into various classes. There were debtors who had been ordered by a judge to pay more than they possessed and had therefore been sent to prison for contempt of court. There was a rich, blind lawyer, seventy years of age, who had gone to gaol for bigamy. There was a fine, upstanding solider who had been sentenced with
what he thought undue severity for returning five minutes late from leave and had thereupon vowed that he would not do another hand’s turn of fighting for the authorities: in order to keep this vow, he had made a point of stealing whisky whenever he was released from prison, which, however, occurred with increasing rarity. Then there was a fat, cheerful, good-natured fellow, who was a connoisseur in prisons and always chose his gaol with care; his reason for a criminal career was that only in prison could he escape from his wife. Then there was a man who had been for seventeen years an officer of the Salvation Army, whose boy had been fined for coming late to school; the Salvationist considered that the fine had been inflicted from malice and therefore refused to pay it; he was, however, persuaded that the Lord had led him to that place for a wise purpose. In addition to these desperate ruffians, there were three members of the Soviet Government and a large number of men who considered it their duty to obey the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount.3 On the whole, the people I met in prison seemed to me more agreeable companions than the members of the best clubs.
