POLITICAL CAMOUFLAGE.
[To THE EnITON OF THE " SPECTATOR."' SIR,—National Service embraces many occupations to-day, and its value covers a wide field. I do not profess to be in a position adequately to appraise the various kinds of service that are being done in the national interest, but I am persuaded that the service which the Spectator is doing through the medium of its leading articles to expose the chicanery which is practised by some of the members of the Government deserves to rank among the highest forms of service to the State.
Camouflage is not wholly practised to deceive our enemy; its influence is to be observed in many of the plans that are laid, in the speeches that are made, and the articles that are prepared for public consumption. There is too great a tendency in public life to-day to screen the public from the actual facts, and leaders of industry are far from satisfied that the men possessing the greatest power have displayed that grasp of essentials which is so desperately imperative in this hour of grave peril. The nation is not in the humour to be trifled with. We at home, like the troops in the trenches, have soberly and deliberately to face the situation. We have to present a united front to the enemy, and to do this successfully we must have done with all bombastic rhetoricians. What we demand from our statesmen is action— organized, systematized, well-planned, and efficiently directed action. Given this, victory will be ours. We have been -wasting valuable time. Look at the record of the past. The unprecedented heroism of our troops in Gallipoli was unavailing because our Government would not see the necessity of sending reinforcements to our brave units, which were allowed to be reduced to skeletons. We have suffered reverses in other parts of the field through the same cause. The crisis reached on the Western Front ought to have found us prepared in every particular. For well over a year we have been warned of what was most likely to happen, but it seems as though we have only just wakened to a full realization of the call that our troops would make for assistance. Do we still lack leaders with the acute vision and power of organization which the emergency demands ? Your well-reasoned arguments seem to suggest that this is the case.—I am, Sit, &c.,
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