New Britain herald., 1915-12-04
ChiticiSe Board of Parole.
("'The Commentator in The New
 London Day)

1nifac1Se Board of Parole
 ("The Commentator" in The New
 London Day.)
 If the board Of pardons in it's wis dom, conceives that the ends of JJus- tice will not be defeated by the re- lease of William r. Walker, the New Britain bank enbezzler. from state prison, certainly l am not one or those who believe it their duty to set themselves in opposition. ] do not feel that it will make a great oeal ol difference in the sum of the "oIIo morality, one way or the olher' De cause Walker gets his liberty. fef- haps I am more than ordlnaT119 oPt'i minded, anyhow, on the whore su ject of criminology. ] don seem "o have any very fixed convictions on the suhject-except that ] am good ana soIidIy opposed to capital punlsIrneI ss a general prop posithon. So learn ol the Walker parole with entire equan- irnitv just as l would have learned with eefuanimity of a decision to re- fuse him his liberty. In other Words' I don't care 8 hoot. one way or e1le ether
 Nevertheless it does make TOT some ,,afher cynical reflections when a man VI f,ir11c-and a particularly reasonable sort If cri777 7c-attracts the tender so- ,.citude of large numbers of inf1uen- tial peorle, gets his case conSpic- vOusly aired in the newspapers, is made the subject of all sorts of peu- lions and the exertiOn of all sorts of influence, and finally walks out of 1ail into life of at least physical comfort long before his term is com pleted-whle some poor devil who never did one-tenth as much damage, and who probably never was in Q posi- ton to actually learn right from wrong, anyhow, has to stay in quod till the COWS come home.
 It's all right--it's all right! Pm not kicking over the Walker liberation. But I can't. to save me, get the rela- tive injustice out of my noodle. Rel stive injustice, l say, mind; and rela- tive injustice I mean. I do not pre- tend to pass on the question of whether Walker has been sufficiently punished; I know that seven years Tn prison would be punishment enough for me if I had wrecked 40 banks in stead of one or if I had shot up a whole roomful of people: seven years must be terribly long time to stay in prison. But can't see Walker without seeing the rest of those erring souls up there in Wethersf1eld and wondering whether seven years was any longer to him that to them; whether there was any less wicked ness and injury in what he did than in what some of them did who have been there more than seven years and who will doubtless stay for more than seven years longer.
 Of course Walker was q fool With all his position and his responsibility and his share in the esteem of his fel- low toWnspeople, he was a mere pea nut headed fool with all fools lack of moral fabric and moral stamina. And he always has been a fool. That wasn't his fault, of course; nobody is to blame for being fool. But there are degrees Of folly and Walker wasn't so much of fool but what he knew quite as well as you or ! that the things he did with that New Britain banks money were criminal things. Which Is precisely the position of nine out of ten of the Whethersfield crowd The criminal is always more or less of fool generally quite as much of a fool as Walker.
 So relatively, it is pretty hard to make out much of case Tor Walker that couldn't be made out for any ether criminal But that isn't saying, necessa riIv that the world or the state of Connecticut is going to be any the worse off because Walker is liberated. It might not. necessarily, mean that the world or Connecticut would be any the worse off if all the 20 year men in Whethersfield got out at the end of seven years. l don't know, for sure Neither do you.
 Listen: Charlie Gondorf, the crook who engineered the footing of Walker, and his gang between them got e94o 900 out of the New Britain man. Nobody would accuse them of being fools, on the face of that; presumably if takes q pretty clever crook to get S24O.00O away from a banker. even if the banker is moro or less of a fool. one is liable to think of Walker as II weak minded victim and Gondorf us a highly intelligent and very wick cd man. Yet what did GOndOrf and his pals do with that S24O,OOO? They did precisely what Walker did with it.
 Walker played the nearly quarter of a million against Gondorf'S game Con drrf and his crew played it against other gamblers games-probably as sure as Gondorfs. They dumped every dollar of that bundle into the