The outbreak by the LR.A. convicts in Dartmoor Prison on Saturday suggests that the practice of keeping these men together and segregated from the other prisoners is not after all the wisest one. These men kept thus to themselves are able to plot trouble without any very great check being maintained over them, while if they were treated just the same as any other prisoner, forced to mix with the others on precisely the same footing, the chances of their being able to stir up trouble would be greatly reduced. Too much appears to be made of the claim that they are political prisoners. They are in fact nothing of the kind. It is true that for what they conceive to be political reasons they have broken the laws of Great Britain, but their political beliefs cannot be held to justify their actions, and once they have been convicted they should be dealt with in exactly the same manner as any other man sent to jail to purge his offences, That course was followed in the case of the two LR.A. men sentenced to death for murder and duly executed. Strenuous efforts were made to secure a reprieve for them, and even Mr. de Valera did his utmost for the men, but the British Government took the view, and rightly so, that these bombings, and the like which lead to the deaths of innocent people, have to be dealt with in the only way possible, namely by allowing the law to take its proper course. The same should surely apply in the case of IRA. members convicted of crimes less heinous only in the matter of degree. It is to be hoped that these men involved in Saturday's outbreak will receive the punishment they so richly merit, for by their action they were not only breaking prison rules, but were following a course which might have led to the deaths or injury of some of their fellow convicts in the jail. That, and their dispersal through the various jails of the country, taking great care that they shall be unable to form a bloc as they appear to have done at Dartmoor, can be the only safe guarantee that they will be obliged for the future to mend their manners.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.