Sin.--Your powerful indictment of the spirit of lassitude which 2ppears
to be settling upon the people is timely. That spirit apparently mystifies you. If you lived in a great industrial centre, as I do, you Would be mystified no longer.
The whole explanation, as I and thousands of others see it, is the inequality of sacrifice—many people doing extraordinarily well out of the war, while thousands are feeling the pinch every day of their lives.
The stories one hears of pre-war nonentities suddenly hoisted into positions, with salaries they could never hope to approach but for war- nat. e conditions, and given control over men who know exactly how incompetent are such individuals, are having a very bad effect on all Who hear them. Only this week I was told of a youngster, with influential backing, who is now being paid L1,5oo a year in a job Which would be overpaid any time at L500. Stories like this get around works, with the inevitable effect. But it is not only such instances that are causing dissatisfaction. Boys and men on war work 2e making huge wages, and have money enough to indulge in all the expensive methods of living—and there are still plenty of ways of doing so—while salaried workers are in very many cases struggling along on their pre-war pay, yet having to meet all the extra costs which war-time entails.
One big firm has steadily declined applications for increases of pay -Y the lower-salaried members of their establishment, yet, so far as " eY are allowed to get away with it, they are spending big sums on things which might well wait until after the war. Their wage people's interests are, of course, watched by the Unions, and the firm has been compelled to pay the increases demanded. It is well known to the hard-pushed salaried employees that the firm's actual profits were never so big as they are now. Does this sort of thing make a man burn with patriotic zeal? The assertion in some quarters that " we are all suffering " is as absurd as it is baseless, and until " equality of sacri- fice " is given real meaning the spirit of lassitude which you rightly deplore will not only continue, but will become more and more
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