Central Association is positive, as prescribing that, under careful and kindly shepherding and supervision, a man shall actually work where work is found for him, and shall remain at work under the penalty of report for failing to observe the conditions of licence. The difference between the negative and positive forms of licence has been the subject of much discussion in the United States of America, where the English methods, as prescribed by the Penal Servitude Acts of last century, have been ruled out of court by a strong public opinion, which insists that for many of the crimes for which men are sentenced to Penal Servitude, it is neither necessary nor reasonable to inflict a long period of segregation under severe penal conditions. It is felt there, as it is by many people in this country, that a comparatively short period, followed by discharge on _positive_ licence, with liability to forfeiture on relapse, would restore many men to normal conditions of life before the habit of hard work had been blunted by imprisonment, and family and other ties broken, and would save large sums of public money now spent on imprisonment. The application of the principle of Preventive Detention to our Penal Servitude System would, of course, involve the question of the Indeterminate Sentence. That opinion is hardening in the direction of some such system in lieu of Penal Servitude is demonstrated by the fact that at the last International Congress in Washington in 1910, a resolution in favour of the Indeterminate Sentence, as a punishment for grave crime, was carried unanimously by delegates representing most of the countries of Europe and of the civilised world. The successful working depends almost entirely on the capacity and discretion of the Advisory Committee, appointed under Section 14(4) of the Act of 1908, and what success has been attained is due to the care taken by the Committee in the investigation of each individual case, and in the suggestions offered to guide the Secretary of State in deciding the question of conditional release. By the death of Sir Edward Clayton, Chairman of this Committee since 1914, a great public loss has been sustained. He devoted himself during the latter years of his life with untiring energy to the duties of this office, for which he was pre-eminently qualified by his long experience in prison administration, as well as by largeness of view and understanding of the criminal problem. From the elaborate Memorandum which he wrote shortly before his death, it appears that his experience at Camp Hill made him a strong advocate of the Indeterminate Sentence, and he feared that the fixing of a definite limit, irrespective of a man's reformation, may defeat eventually the intention of the Act. The intention of the Act was, it will be remembered, primarily that there should be no fixed limit of detention, but Parliament thought otherwise, and the present limit of ten years, with a minimum of five, was decided upon.