{The Law}[17th January 1971]

[Redbook1:193-194][19710117a]{The Law}[17th January 1971]

17.1.71. [continued]

            The law is like fire: it can warm you or burn you, keep you alive or kill you.  On the one hand it must be fed, kept alive, or we shall perish; on the other it must be kept under control, prevented from spreading too far, or we shall perish.

            I remember when I was at prep school thinking that if my contemporaries did to me as adults what they did to me as schoolmates I could have them taken to court and in all probability imprisoned as well is sued for damages; and yet in this allegedly gentle, innocent world of childhood there was nothing I could do, no authority to whom I could appeal (not by the laws of childhood) to prevent these things which would not have been tolerated for one instant by any adult with a clear conscience, had they happened to him.  We were protected from the police and from the standards of the outside world, which we needed above all others: for who was there to protect us from each other?

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