Sta,—Your article " Braced and Compact? " I feel requires

an answer. I suppose the real reply is that the country is fed up with the war. However, I wish to reply as one of the " morbid cynicism of youth " class to which the writer refers. Anyway, what I have to say may indicate why things are as they appear to be.

For some years before the war I became increasingly ashamed to belong to this nation. I have read much history and was ashamed of much of that too, but I became more and more discouraged at the complete lack of interest people displayed about things such as government, dishonesty, the awful products of education and many other things. Gradually I saw that man (I only know that of this country) just was not noble or great or hardworking or clever. Mostly he seemed to be a brainless idiot who had no desire- to earn and who expected government to do everything for him ; who complained bitterly about taxes and conditions but stirred no finger to try and make things better.

During the past year, when one thing has gone after another through what I can only realise as the brainless idiocy I mentioned before, I have come to the bitter conclusion that I had indeed been thoroughly led up the garden over the greatness of England. No wonder America has despised us. It seems to me that hypocrisy is the matter with this country. No doubt the people in Malaya did not help us against the Japanese. Of course they would not. We were just as much invaders as they, and while our occupation may have been better than the Japanese will be, we were an alien race. It applies to so many places, and the attitude I cannot stand is the dishonest way we say it is entirely for their good. Who gets the large profits? Who consumes the goods? We do We no doubt do confer some benefits, but we confer disease and labour troubles also and we arouse the jealousy of other nations with the result that twice in 3o years the best of the country is thrown away. The wicked waste of 1914-18 is being repeated. The goodness in man is merely a thin veneer of good manners and education, which soon vanishes when scratched.

Of course this is the attitude of a woman who sees what she was created for reduced to dust and ashes. After four years of marriage not only do I see our future ruined but I know now that I will never be responsible for bringing another life into this world to be killed or widowed in another twenty years' time. I think other people are beginning to realise a few of these things now and that is why the country's temper and spirit is not what it was.

No government can be trusted, and its successors are not bound by its promises. The cruel harshness towards those who are unfortunate, handed out under the cloak of national generosity; the wicked way our money and lives have been squandered; our homes destroyed and happiness ruined ; the enormous amount of dishonesty, crime and black-market operations ; the utter incompetence displayed in the army; the way certain sections of the community still live in luxury; all these and more arc the causes of our present low spirit. As usual things are done half-heartedly and too late. I do not consider that to be a joke as some do. Women are torn away from home, and yet hundreds and hundreds of men are still engaged in silly unnecessary pursuits such as the Stock Exchange in the City alone.

There has been much loose talk about people living in luxury, but many still do. What right has anyone to buy expensive meals or clothes ; stay at expensive hotels, keep maids and chauffeurs and be able to go abroad like Lady Diana Cooper when her husband went to Singapore? Plenty of other people have husbands and children far away and cannot see them. Those who skimp and save only have their rations of certain things based on their present con- zumption and careless and extravagant people score all along the line. I am thinking of coal particularly. The trouble of course is that the vast majority feel that the war is being run by a clique and that is why there is so much dissatisfaction. It is not " our war." As a charwoman said the other day, " too many of them have got friends and relations and money over there in Germany." I think, as you- say, the root of the trouble is the absence of faith in the destiny and worth of this country.

Another side of the question is the insulting attitude of the B.B.C. with regard to news and programmes. We are treated as if we were as half-baked as the authorities appear to be and as if our intelligence were ml. The programmes are too awful to describe, and whereas once I quite liked dance music, now I would gladly wring the necks of every band and crooner in the country. Our lives are drab and unhappy and the least we ask is beautiful music,

In conclusion, though we may in the end win the war satisfactorily, someone must soon start the first volume of the "Decline and FaL of the British Empire." No nation can stand two disastrous wars without very serious results and we were sick enough before the wa: started. What parents are taken in now? What wife sees her husband go to his death for his country without seeing that the whole sorry talc will be repeated it years to come as it has been in the past? Each

succeeding generat' has been urged to lay down its life for its children's freedon. and those children were never free from war. I think it is only fair to say that Germany seems to be having trouble over its morale as well, judging from Goebbels' recent appeal. If the wars had been 4o years apart instead of 20 it might have been different "i his is scrappy and incomplete but I am afraid I have not time for revision and feel I have left much out. Anyway, it may show what the misdeeds of our parents have done to their children. The sins of omission are coming home thick and fast.—Yours faithfully, i6 The Highlands, Ricksmansworth, Herts. W. R. TARR (MRS.) [From a great number of other letters on this subject we select the following points.] Your article on page 223 of your issue of the 6th instant on the subject "Braced and Compact? " was excellent and much needed, and I am glad to say was read in our parish church here on Sunday. at morning and afternoon services, being listened to with rapt attention by all at the services. It would be well if other parishes followed the example. The " hungry sheep " did look up and were abundantly fed with the meal your stirring article afforded them.

" Gooayers," Holywell, St. Ives, Hunts. CORNWALL S. BAILY.

I do not believe that defeats in themselves are the real trouble. The feeling of most people known to me is rather that the whole war has got to that stage where it is assaulting a very weak spot in our spiritual composition ; and this I can only express by the rather dreadful phrase that it is becoming a bore. To think of all the braveries and miseries involved, and the terrific issues at stake, and yet, while realising that, to have to struggle against a sense of staleness and boredom is quite dreadful, and I fancy that therefore most of us feel a little ashamed of ourselves. But there it is, and the deadly sameness of the nine o'clock news every night is a daily assault on this particular frayed nerve.

No one but a fool wants news which will harm our cause to be known, and no one was more horrified than the ordinary man when the news of radio-location was announced. But the censor- ship clamps under its blanket half the details which have power to stimulate imagination. We do not even know what regiments are fighting in Libya and Burma and Java. There must be glorious tales to tell about the deliveries to Russia, but we are never told them, And to a private citizen who emphatically wants no news which it might be harmful to announce, it is really very hard to attach the right and deadly meaning to shipping losses when we have absolutely no knowledge of what these losses are, and none of such execution which is done to the submarines and aircraft as cause them.

Cheyney Court, The Close, Winchester. ROGER LLOYD.

The bulk of the people of this country (i.e., munition, factory, transport and mine workers) know and feel that sense of urgency, but there is a feeling of frustration amongst them born of muddle-headed leadership. Moving amongst many types of workers I find a fatalism predominating which has been brought about by the self-interest dis- played by their immediate superiors. A local instance will add empha- sis to this point. This week-end a certain factory engaged on Govern- ment work stood off a portion of its workers on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, in order that they might exhibit ample evi- dence of their industry on Saturday afternoon when Government in- spectors were scheduled to visit the works. No doubt the inspectors found the factory to be a real hive of industry, but what effect had this " stunt " on the workers?

R. H. WILBY. " Stoneyhurst," Dearden Street, Ossett, Yorks.

In your timely article under the above title in your March 6th issue, the question is asked why Russia's need calls forth such 1 response among our own people, and it is suggested that the Main reason is the belief that no one there is in a position to grow richer through the war. While heartily endorsing the suggestion, I Want to put forward another that goes still deeper: I believe the magnen.c power of Russia over our working class lies in their belief that 10 Russia the country belongs to the working class, while here . England they themselves are hardly more than serfs. After years of mingling with men and women of the working class, I do not remember meeting one working man holding a contrary opinion-