In compliance with the King's wishes a large number—probably the majority—of the feasts to p.or people and treats to children with which the Coronation was to be comm: morated have now been beld, generally with hearty yood-will in th Knowledge thatit we could not "cornuate we could at least rejoice in the King's rapid recovery. In some places the festit ities were postponed for a time with unfortunate results. There has be-n disorder in three or four towns, but Watford is the only one in which it has been at all serious. There the rough element of the town, baulked of its beer and beef, vented its anger on those it held responsible by breaking windows and wrecking shops. More than fifty arrests were mad+, and most of these accused have been found guilty and sent t" prison for varying terms. That the punishments were richly deserved nobody can deny Tie offences displayed a curiously mean and callous kind of selfishness; but after all when one considers how deep the disappointment must have been in many cases, and when one remembers that the posp"nement, which many doubtless regarded as an abandonment of the festivifies, was in direct conflict with the ex-desire of the King, it is really creditable to the classes who were to profit by the feasts that teking the country as a whole the instances of disorder were quite insignificant in number.
Hooliganism.
There is of course in every large community a cumins! or semi-criminal class which will gather with extraordinary rapidity to riot and loot when once the police have been rendered powerl-s. We had evidence of this in London not many years ago. Hooliganism is rife in London now, and there is much discussion as to the
dissatisfaction was expressed to-day at the means of suppressing it. A good deal of sentence of seven years' penal servitude by Mr. Justice Darling at the Old iley on the man found guilty of consi Mr. Herbert Spicor's death. It will he remembered that Mr. Spicer, who had fought with distinction as an Imperial Yeoman in Sowh Africa, had been out with a friend looking at the illuminations on the night of the Peace Celebration when, in Euston Roa, the two gentlemen were attacked by a party of hooligans, and Mr. Spicer, whose movements were impeded effects of a wound received in South Africa, was struck on the head from behind with a heavy buckled strap, receiving a mortal wound. Beels the accused, protested his innocence to the last, but he was identified by an independent witness—awoman—as the man who struck the fatal blow, and there was corroborative evidence. "There can, indeed, be no sonable doubt of his gri:!:; and the judge expressed the opinion that the jury Would have been justified in returning a verdict of wilful mud-r. They were merciful enough, however, t" call it manslaughter, and the Julge was, in the general opinion, unduly merciful in the sentence he passed. Military training is the remedy which the ''Times" ests for the incipient hooligan, bs the full-flogged ruffian of the type of a severity which will iaspire terror is the only effectual course.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.