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537 committed the offence with which he was charged, but were not in a position to find out the causes of his behaviour. Thus theft might be an expression of hunger, greed, jealousy, spite, a desire to shine or to please, or of bravado ; these emotions might have their root in too strict or too lenient a home, in poor health or ebullient spirits, or in broken family relation- L ships. She too felt that better and younger magistrates are needed. For children of 8 life in a supervised foster home was better than in an approved school ; there they would learn how to live in society as members of society. She also thought there should be small homes where borderline mental defectives could be sent; these children, unfit to battle with life but not dull enough to be certified, cannot suitably go to an approved school; they are thus often left to the care of the probation officer who, after all, cannot be constantly at hand. Yet even with our im- perfect methods of dealing with them it seems that at least 80% of our delinquents recover and become od citizens. With widening interest in their roblei4s and better measures for their care it should e possible to reclaim the remainder. Annotations LESS SMOKE NOW THE Smoke Abatement Society are considering chang- ing their name, for they rightly hold that post-war I reconstruction is going to give us an opportunity not only to abate our reek but to abolish it. In the meantime soap rationing, as one of our peripatetics has lately pointed out, is bringing home to us the extravagance of our dirty ways. When we get round to completing the slum clearance scheme which Hitler has begun for us, we may be in the proper frame of mind to spend a little more to ensure that the old taunt-cleanliness may be next to godliness, but in Pittsburgh it’s next to impossible ,-can never again be applied to our cities. But once the war is over we shall all be eager to get the place tidied up as soon as may be, and there is a danger that in our haste precautions against smoke will be forgotten. The society has therefore suggested some safeguards which might well be adopted in advance. They propose first that all new installations of fuel-burning equipment, including industrial plant, should be approved by a competent authority. Smokelessness is more readily achieved in commercial buildings, such as blocks of offices, than in homes and factories, and they would not permit any open fires in new premises of this type. With the help of gas and electricity the need for open fires in the home has been greatly reduced and an ade- quate supply of smokeless fuel at a reasonable price could be guaranteed for the remaining open grates. The society also suggest that smokeless areas should be enforced in the centres of our great cities-Manchester had almost achieved this when war broke out. These reservations - would serve as an inspiring example of amenity and cleanliness to the rest of the city. Town- planning schemes should give special attention to the zoning of industry and the establishment of industrial ,states. The society recommend also that the possi- bilities of district heating should be explored, and an informative appendix to their memo describes the progress it has made in America and on the Continent. The New York Steam Corporation, for instance, in 1939 supplied 1927 consumers occupying 2105 million cu. ft. of building space with steam at a pressure of 100-150 lb. to the sq. in., enough to heat some 200,000 flats of 3-4 1. Smoke Prevention in relation to Initial Post-war Reconstruction, memo submitted by the National Smoke Abatement Society, Woodborough, Nottingham. rooms each. The society also advocate the formulation of a national fuel policy. The rationing this summer of every kind of fuel may well be a landmark in this. policy, as was the rationing of foodstuffs 25 years ago in a nutrition policy. PSYCHIATRIC SELECTION IN AMERICA OuR own attempts to devise a mesh through which only the psychologically stable can find their way into the Services have had their counterpart in America. An extract 1 from the annual report of the William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation reviews progress since 1926, when a joint Army and Navy selective service committee was established ; this body over ten years drew up a comprehensive plan for a national headquarters under which a medical division would determine policy, and supervise medical machinery and field operations. In 1938, however, rumours of war seem to have diverted the committee from their course, and they decided that the medical examiners on the local boards should only eliminate candidates with easily recognisable physical disabilities, leaving a more thorough examination to the Service doctors. In 1940 Lieut.-Colonel C. B. Spruit became medical adviser to the committee ; he did not favour the idea of hurried medical inspections by the local boards, thinking this was not the sort of work to call out the voluntary cooperation of competent practitioners. Legislation followed which established a Selective Service system under National Headquarters very much on the lines proposed by the joint committee in 1936, and an official volume on physical standards was circulated which made uniform classification of candidates possible. Meanwhile the Southern Psychiatric Association drew the Government’s attention to the dearth of well-trained psychiatrists, and the White Foundation submitted a bulletin to the Selective Service system containing a plan for the psychiatric examination of candidates for military service. Discussions followed, as a result of which the War Department required induction boards to provide one psychiatric examiner for every 50 candidates examined- daily. Seminars were then planned in order to unify standards among Army induction board psychia- trists and all selective service psychiatry examiners ; these seminars were successful and well attended. Diagnosis and procedure were discussed in relation to patients falling into the following groups : I, the mentally defective ; II and III, psychopathic and cyclothymic personalities ; IV, psychoneurotics ; V, schizoids and schizophrenes; VI, chronic inebriates ; VII and VIII, organic nervous defects or diseases ; and those-chiefly in groups IV and V-with psychosomatic disorders. Much of the success of this part of the programme depended on the vigorous psychiatric advisory committee of the Selective Service system. This body now pro- posed that the state medical officers should arrange for one of the autumn meetings of each county medical society to be devoted to a study of the ways in which the general practitioner can recognise the candidates he would refer on psychiatric grounds. This, however, was not so easy to achieve ; it seemed that many of the local board doctors were disgruntled. They disliked having their rulings upset by Army examiners, and being asked to explain by rejected patients whom they had previously passed. Moreover they resented the fact that their services were given freely while the Army induction personnel were being paid, albeit at a low rate. Cer- tainly some odd situations had arisen : for example doctors varied greatly in their standards for rejection, especially when it came to teeth and mental or nervous handicaps. Then the regulations required that a rejected man should be given a copy of the report on his exa- mination ; and employers might wish to see this as evidence of rejection. When the report happened to run : " Constitutional psychopathic inferiority ; sexual 1. Reprinted in Psychiatry, 1941, 4, 440.
