The Home Secretary in the House of Commons on Thursday
week made a frank and courageous speech on the treatment of enemy aliens. It is refreshing in these days, when so many politicians— as well as the journalists to whom Mr. Lloyd George paid this dubious compliment—are " keeping their ears to the ground," to find Sir George Cave saying : " You must take into account public feeling, although you must not be pressed by public feeling, however strong, into doing what is unfair or unjust." There spoke the statesman. Since May, 1915, said Sir George Cave, all enemy aliens of military age had been interned unless the Advisory Committees composed of Judges, Members, and others, recommended their exemption. He did not think that any ill results had followed, but the Government had undertaken to reconsider the whole system. He would never agree to intern all who were technically enemy aliens, including Alsatians, Poles, and Czecho-Slovaks, invalids, and those whose sons were fighting for us. But the lists of those who were at liberty should be revised, together with the' certificates of naturalization granted to enemy aliens during the war.
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