Foreign News: Pretty

Power to pardon rests with His Majesty's Home Secretary, at present the Rt. Hon. John Robert Clynes, onetime worker in a cotton mill. One night last week he sat up late, thought about one Olive Catherine Wise. She had put a baby (hers) in an oven (cold) and turned on the gas. She had been sentenced to hang. Were there extenuating circumstances?

Miss Wise, before she went to prison, chopped wood, peddled it in the streets. Thus she earned enough to feed her four children. When she found that a fifth was imminent, Miss Wise became desperate, asphyxiated her fourth.

After pondering the case, Mr. Clynes decided, decreed that life imprisonment is the right punishment for this unmarried, expectant mother. Appraising British journalists have insisted daily that, despite all she has been through, Miss Wise is still "pretty."