11 AUGUST 1917, Page 11

A SOLDIER'S VIEW OS PEACE.

(To rag EDITOR or tee .SPEcIATOR."1 Sra,—I have to-day received a letter from my eon in France (he has been there Since 1914) in which he says:— " To ray mind every man killed and every penny spent are an additional reason for fighting to a finish; otherwise what has everything been but utter and outrageous waste? It is wrong to talk about the responsibility of continuing the war, a phrase invented by the fun; it is a far greater ono, by patching up a peace, to waste the lives of every Englishman who has been killed —to say nothing of our Allies, and even the lions, for if we weren't going to beat them it was waste to kill them."

This opinion of a young soldier may not be worth much; but after three winters in the trenches he knows what it means to face a fourth. No one can any he knows not what he is talking [Of course his opinion is worth a very great deal. Every soldier mast long for peace even more than we civilians do. But the splendid fact is that every soldier is willing to go on. If soldiers were enjoying the war we should have much less admiration for their resolution. The motive that makes a soldier "stink it" is a thing of amazing force and quality. Pacificists millet find it worth while to examine it. Their ready phrases about Imperialism and annexation and Jingoism simply do not touch it.—Eo. Spectator.]