[TO THE EDITOR OF THS " RISCTATOR.1 SIR,—Thank God I
have seen your "leader" of July 15th. The terms of peace are to be dictated and not subjected to negotiation I The Spectator has said it, and who in England will suggest that the Spectator is given to making fire-eating or thoughtless statements ? I and a handful of thousands in England such as I, members of the Regular Services, have been thinking and saying this since August, 1914, but all the while we have not been quite convinced in our own minds that we were not suffering from an exuberance caused either by youth or by " Public-schooldom " I Now we are certain that such was not the case. When we have spoken of Germany's being beaten to her knees, grey- beards and wiseacres have shaken their heads and sometimes smiled indulgently. When we have mentioned an indemnity, even for Bel- gium, we have been told that such a thing was an impossibility. And now it seems that perhaps we were right after all ; the Spectator has spoken. Let the fame of that article be noised abroad ; let it be echoed from end to end of the Empire. If it were reprinted in leaflet form and distributed hand to hand throughout the United Kingdom, if it were read from every pulpit and in every other public place and in every public, private, and national school in England, it would not receive too great a, publicity. Let every man in England take a mighty oath that such are to be the conditions of the coming peace, whether that peace arrive this year, or next year, or in ten years' time, and though countless further casualties may yet have to be incurred. Thin only will the world be safe. The great Lord Kitchener is gone ; let us see to it that the lack of his stiffening force in high places is not accountable for Britain's consenting to a patched-up peace, which in itself would be a crime and worse, a blunder, from which the history of the world would never recover.—I am, Sir, &c.,
LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER, ROYAL NAVY.
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