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It is always a pleasure to have one's work discussed by Professor Glanville Williams even when the discussion takes the form of an attempt at thorough devastation. In his article 'Which of you did it?' Professor Williams devotes a hard-hitting paragraph to the refutation of my suggestion that a parent who fails to prevent his or her young child from making a serious attack on another child in the parent's presence might be guilty of the crime committed in failing to prevent it.2 Professor Williams concedes that the control principle which I espouse might appear to work satisfactorily in some cases, but rejects it on the ground that it would lead to absurdity in other cases. Two cases of alleged absurdity are identified and then a third case which he thinks falls outside the control principle is added, possibly to indicate the incoherence of that principle. I will examine the three cases and attempt to show that far from revealing absurdity or incoherence, they can be easily and comfortably accommodated.