LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
REPARATION.
(To TIM EDITOR or TEC " SPECTATOR.") gin,—Allow me to express my hearty concurrence with your leading article on this subject. I have consistently advocated the same view in our paper. It is not at all a question of revenge, but of plain justice and needed deterrence. My feeling has constantly grown that if ever there was a war to rouse enthusiasm to a high pitch, it is this great fight of the Allies for justice. But would it be just, not to say wise, to let Germany escape the consequences of her unprecedented crime? No Court of Justice in any civilized country would commit such a folly in regard to individual crimes. And are crimes such as Germany committed against the Allied countries, and indeed against the whole of humanity, less deserving of punishment than individual crimes ? In my opinion, which all honest men over the whole world will share, they are infinitely worse and deserving accordingly of severer punishment. If that is agreed, then there can be no question of the perfect justice to claim from Germany full reparation for all her ruthless misdeeds. Some time ago I wrote that modern criminology finds imprisonment insufficient to dis- courage criminals, but recommends to make them afterwards pay and work for the reparation of their crimes. This method is really the only effective means to make Germany understand that war and inhumane warfare do not pay. Besides it will be a warning to the German people that the more atrocities they allow their rulers to commit on land and sea the heavier will afterwards be their burden to make everything good. Sentimentality should have no play in a matter like this, for a Power like Germany considers that a sign of weakness and is thereby encouraged to ever more shocking
brutality. But she will have respect for a severe policy of repara- tion. And who dares to advocate that countries like Belgium. France, Serbia, and Poland should themselves have to toil for at bast a generation to repair, so far as it is possible, all the wickedness which Germany committed on their perfidiously invaded soil?—I am, Sir, &c., JOHN C. VAN DER Vasa, London Editor of the Amsterdam Teleorsal. 29 Minster Road, NM'.
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