19 MARCH 1937, Page 3

A King's Counsel's Counsel When a boy of eighteen attempts

to seduce a member of the Royal Air Force from duty he is sent to prison for twelve months. -Since that sentence is -being appealed against there can be no-comment on it here. Neither is any extensive comment called for—mere textual quotation is as eloquent as any comment—on the speech in which Sir Stafford Cripps, a former Law Officer of the Crown, informed his audience that today you have the most glorious opportunity that the workers have ever had if you will only use the necessity of capitalism in order to get power yourselves. The capital- ists are in your hands. Refuse to make munitions, refuse to make armaments and they are helpless. They would have to hand the control of the country over to you." General incitement of this order may not be legally actionable ; that is a question to which Sir Stafford's successors as Law Officers of the Crown will no doubt give attention. There may, moreover, be a natural tendency to dismiss the affair as "only Cripps again." But when a man secure of wealth and comfort himself sees fit to urge working men to a course which would leave them worldess and penniless he lays himself under a moral condemnation tenfold more damaging than any legal sentence.