THE REAL FAILURE OF THE GOVERNMENT.
• [To TIM EDITOR OP TRH "SPECTATOR.") Sra,—Will you permit me, as an Australian officer, to point out the real matter in which our Government has, in my opinion, fallen short 1` We are allowing ourselves to be carried away by plans for annexing German trade during and after the war, and we are in danger of forgetting the real objects for which we are fighting. These objects are based on the highest possible moral grounds. We are fighting because of the invasion of Belgium and the wanton and unprovoked attack upon. France ; because of the awful atrocities perpetrated by the German soldiers upon the people of those unhappy lands ; because of the whole.. sale murders, ravishings, massacre of children, burnings, and destruction, of immemorial treasures that they have wrought. We are fightinga moreover, because of the wholesale murders of inoffensive men, womena and children on the Lusitania ' and scores of other harmless merchant- ships. We are fighting because of the German disregard of treaties, because of their forgeries and infringements of all international law. These are the objects for which we are fighting; and in my view the
Government should state these openly, not once, but again and again. They should call all neutral nations, and the German people themselves, to witness the facts, repeatedly, perseveringly, and emphatically. They should state boldly the truth that any peace at present possible would be a condonation of these crimes, and that it would be better that all Europe should be ruined than that such things should go unpunished. And the first preliminary to peace must be that the Germans shall retire to their own country. I do not understand why the Government cannot state these things, not once, but daily if necessary. Reiteration, as advertisers show us, is necessary to impress a truth, and we shall never get the opinion of mankind thoroughly on our aide unless we speak out openly and boldly what is in our mind. To our true case there is no possible answer ; the Germans have never attempted to answer it. Let us state it, then, clearly once and again, till the world
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