TROISIÈME SECTION

- 394 —women of heart, of energy, of saneness. Personalîty is a primefactor in the make-up of a good probation officer. It is ailimportantthat a friendly relationship be established betweenthe child and the one who has oversight of him. Excellentresults are often obtained by volunteer probation agencies andit is not easy to over-estimate the value of the work accomplishedby the "Big Brothers" and similar movements and notinfrequently by those exception soûls who voluntarily placetheir time and talents at the disposai of the court.But paid probation officers are recommended. Présentmethods of selecting the agents of the court are open to criticism.Generally speaking, the volunteer probation officer is anabsolute menace to the probation System. He is capable ofinfinitely more harm to the child and society than he is capableof good towards either. On the other hand, the very fact that onefinds a means of livelihood in his rendering of services makesit incumbent on him that he should strive to reach the highestidéal of perfection in order to maintain an increase his earningpower. It is hazardous, to say the least, to experiment withvolunteers. While sentiment must be one of the virtues of aprobation officer, yet sentimentality is the most dangerousmantle which can cloak the care of a child. No man or womanshould be appointed to the position of probation officer withouta previous course of institutional training and his or lier efficiencywill necessarily be increased by the addition of académietraining. The value of préparation cannot be too stronglyemphasized. It should be ever borne in mind that the child ofcriminal tendency, even the first offender, is a precociousyoungster, infinitely shrewder and vastly wiser than the mostbenevolent volunteer who is moved by sentimentality or a feelingof religious obligation to attend the juvénile court and undertakethe supervision of a child demanding probation.In fixing the status of the state, or society, in third placein the list of probation agencies, this committee repeats theconclusion - that society's first duty is the conservation of itsown best élément, just as individual self-preservation is thefirst law of nature. The state should have absolute supervisionand direct power of review over every institution dealing with— 395 —dépendent or delinquent children—just as it now has over détectives.The state has a right to require and should require thatrecords be kept in a careful and uniform manner and throughintelligent supervision should satisfy itself constantly that theofficiais of institutions are faithfully and properly performingtheir duties. But the state must go about its work alvvays inthe spirit of sympathetic co-operation, senseless antagonism ofthe state's servants often meaning frustration of the very objectswhich society should strive to accomplish for itself.Hope is expressed that more philanthropists will interestthemselves in the solution of the child saving problem. Nobenefit so great to mankind can come to-day. No générationcan be so blessed as the next, if we hand down to a posterityfrom which we have weeded-to the fullness of our opportunités—thedependents, the delinquents and the defectives. Letthe donations to universities and libraries for the moment bediverted to the child helping and the child saving agencies.Then the morrow will find that society is well able to provideitself with thèse institutions out of the savings on diminishedcriminaîity, pauperism and degeneracy and at the same timehave a race of men and women so much the better preparedto enjoy thèse accompaniments of higher civilization.