16 SEPTEMBER 1911, Page 3

The baselessness of these attacks on our soldiers is conclu-

sively shown by a letter signed "Medians " in Wednesday's Daily Graphic. The writer, after recalling Mr. Will Thorne's statement that officers " by their conduct drove thousands of young men to suicide every year," points out that, as a Member of Parliament, Mr. Thorne cannot plead ignorance, for both the Army medical reports and the Registrar-General's annual returns were at his disposal. According to these, while "the death-rate from injuries and suicides per million among males aged 15-35 years in England and Wales for the period embracing the years 1906, 1907, and 1908 was 518, for the Regular Army on the Home Establishment for the same period it was 495." As " Medicus" observes, it is unhappily "a new feature in the history of the nation when its repre- sentatives resort to falsehood to vilify its Army, an Army on which its security and their daily food depend ; doubly so is this the case when that Army is denied the opportunity of defending itself."