Page:Hubert W. Peet - 112 Days' Hard Labour, Being Some Reflections On the First of My Sentences as a Conscientious Objector - 1917.pdf/13

 "No One the Better for Being in Prison"

In the short talks I have been able to get with warders, or before arrest with policemen, I have never discovered one who could admit that any man was ever the better for being in prison. Personally I can imagine nothing more calculated to put a man permanently on the road to ruin. God forbid that I should ever be responsible for sending a man, woman, or child to prison, for any injury to me or mine.

The attempted imposition of silence is unmoral, even if not immoral; the isolation drives the man into himself and tempts him at every turn to fulfil the human instinct of communication with his fellows, a course only possible by the exercise of some petty deceit or the breaking of a rule.

Evil Brooding

The opportunity for brooding over grievances is a corrosive evil. What it must be to the ordinary prisoner—victim of social conditions—I can well imagine from the effect on myself of the mountain of annoyance aroused within me by the molehill incident of delay in getting the promised privilege of a pint of breakfast tea, owing to a temporary error in allocating me the proper marks which entitled me to this addition to the menu.

Punishment

Punishment may take either of several forms. These include the forfeiting of privileges in the way of books, visits, etc., for a period; the performance of the daily task in the cell instead of in association with other prisoners; the loss of remission marks, that is the loss of good behaviour marks by which a prisoner would earn a remission not exceeding one-sixth of his sentence; and the putting of the prisoner on punishment diet. Punishment diet consists of one pound of bread and water per day. This dietary must not be continued for more than three consecutive days. If “P.D.” is imposed for a longer period “B” diet must be given during each alternate period of three days.

Ugliness Everywhere

One of my most conscious lacks in prison was the entire outward absence of beauty. All that ministered outwardly to this vital human need was an occasional glimpse of a sunset, the lines, curves, and distant frescoes of the fine Renaissance Chapel at Wormwood Scrubs, and even the warm brown and green of the worsted bedding. A thrill came over me when at exercise—under leaden sky and between lowering walls at Wandsworth—I one day saw flying overhead some seagulls, stragglers from the winter visitors to the Thames a mile or two away. Their graceful form, their easy motion, their association in one’s mind with the free and open life of sea and shore, of sunshine and “whale-backed