=Ignorance on its defence.=--The state of what has no excuse for being uninformed opinion was only too well illustrated in a letter from the Chairman of the Public Control Committee of the London County Council which appeared in _The Times_ for Feb. 27th, 1908. In defending the London County Council the writer used the following words: “Reformation, not mere detention, was its object when it instituted its reformatory under the Inebriates Acts.... The case of the Public Control Committee is that the removal and detention of the hopeless habituals is a matter for the police.” The explanation aggravates the offence. In the face of reiterated expert opinion, which has no dissentient, as to the practical impossibility of reformation--you cannot _re_form what has never been formed, viz., a normally developed brain--here we find a man in this responsible position, a man who has the power to put his ignorance into action, telling us that the London County Council aims at the impossible in this respect; whilst, in utter defiance of the future and of the useless brutality of the police-court method, he tells us that these “hopeless habituals” are a matter for the police. Then, by way of making the thing complete, he speaks of “mere detention.” What he calls “mere detention” is everything, for it saves the future by preventing parenthood on the part of members of the community who, more certainly than any others that can be named, are unworthy of it. The adjective “mere” is only too adequate a measure of the state of opinion which, by such retrograde courses as that under discussion, promises to destroy the British people ere long--and therefore, of course, the Empire of which that people is the living and necessary foundation.