Excerpt from The Review of Reviews for Australasia: May, 1912

All this means that he had made a plaée for himself in the hearts of the people, from which he could not he dislodged. Both high and low respected him as a man who would not, indeed, could not, use opportunities that oame in his way simply to advance his personal interests.

He was a giant in reform. His personal goodness his sense of justice, his passion for righteous ness, made him a deadlv foe in any combat with wrong that he entered. When he set out to fight he carried no hamper, and went in with the single purpose of slaying the wrong he attacked. Because his vision of the ideal was so clear, he'could not stay at half measures. To him wrong was a thing not to be compromised with, but destroyed. Needless to say, he had to resort to extraordinarv moans sometimes to accomplish his ends but he never shrank from any ordeal, however severe. This was made evident in his attack on the hideous crime of child procuration which had assumed proportions in London that were appalling. He demonstrated, with the aid of some godly women friends, and some of the most irreproachable men in London, that it was ridiculously easy to purchase for immoral purposes children of tender years. It was necessary, in order to prove his accusa tions to the hilt, to show that it was possible to do this. Not one breath of personal scandal could ever attach to him in his punsuit of the. Hideous evil 5 but, through defective and lyiassed justice, which could not see that the salvation of thousands of innocent girls depended on his crusade and that his personal charaoter could not be impeached, he was charged by his country with having committed a technical breach of the law, and, to England's shame, be it said, sentenced to prison for three months, which was re duced to two on the initiative of the Queen. Although treated as a first-class prisoner, the reproach to England was just the same, especially as no effort was made to hound down the brutal monster-s that trafficked in Childhood's innocency. But, as an immediate result: of what he did, the age of consent was immediatelv raised. Ohe can scarcely credit that a Melbourne newspaper, in an otherwise complimentary sketch of his career. Should style this righteous crusade las an earlv blunder. It was a magnificent work, undertaken in the public's interest, and Mr. Stead was probably the onlv man_in the Kingdom who was plucky enough to face it and to carry it through.

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