111k, FRONT TO THE REAR.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:1 SM,—The enclosed extract from a letter received from a young officer may interest some of your readers as showing how the present internal situation strikes one who was, and is, a strong Liberal, or even Radical, in politics.—I am, Sir, &c., N.
" The domestic political situation in Great Britain is obscure and depressing. The flower of the population is fighting, and the weeds are scrambling for money and power. Agitators and self- assertive little men have produced a war-weariness in this country which at times looks like black treason to the men in the trenches. Submarines have diminished our food supplies; aero- lanes have bombed London. These are as trifles to the sufferings which a soldier bears during one hour of battle; but the faint- hearts groan and grow weary, and the Yellow Press, prostituting 'tacit for an increased circulation, gives words to the feelings of he poltroons. They clamour for new Ministers, new Admirals, are bread and more cinemas. The self-sacrificing idealism, the masination needed to picture to themselves what is at stake, they ack. Who will stimulate them to it t Not Mr. Lloyd George, hose oratory is fine, but whose reliability they rightly doubt. of the Church, whose leaders still speak in the language of the lassien to those who better understand the language of Billings- ate. Not Sir Arthur Yams, whose tongue tries to do what his ands cannot. Not the soldiers, for they have lost all patience and can no longer persuade, but must abuse if they speak at all. Any man who would claim to be a statesman now must soon lift up his voice and tell these people that it is not their wretched homes, nor their miserable daily wage, nor the bread with which they fill their flabby bellies for which millions of men have laid down their lives. It is a great and high ideal of freedom and peace for which we are fighting, and, if we lose the war, life will not be worth living even if we have food for our stomachs and palaces to live in. Let it not be thought that all the people in these islands are of this wretched way of thinking. It is only the clamorous few. The great mass of the people are working hard for victory, but they also hardly know what victory or defeat means. They lack imagination; they have not seen great cities in ruins, women violated, children crucified. They see only through a glass darkly what the people of France and Belgium have seen face to face, and they are only too ready to be led by any so-called 'leader ' who may arise among them. Such leaders ' usually appeal to the mere material wants of their hearers; they are usually men of a narrow class outlook, whose world ' is at its largest England, and at its smallest the industrial centre in which they live. What is needed is a real leader of Labour, a man who can combine his interest in the working man with an interest in and intelligent perception of world-politics, a man who will sink the so-called class-war' in the greater issue of the world- war by teaching the people how the Allies are fighting that very battle against a ruling military class, which should appeal to every democrat the world over. Such a man must be ready to impress on his hearers the need for sacrifice at home and the need for thrift. This need will be felt after the war, and the men and women who have squandered large wages will regret their folly : these very people have now in their hands the means of producing more 'social reform' than a dozen Acts of Parlia- ment can procure them. They could have good houses, good boots, and good food, and set aside a sum for their old age, at the same time lending it to their country. Yet too many are simply throwing away their money on cheap jewellery, pianos that they cannot play, and drink. Social reform must come from below, and no Act of Parliament can succeed unless the people set them- selves to improve their own homes. What is our education doing ? If it is not teaching this it is useless. One thing stands out as certain amid all the pessimism of people who are too concerned with the smaller material issues in life. If we as a people pre- serve the will to win, and exercise the energy and endurance which the soldiers in France are proving to be the great inherit- ance of the British race, we can and we shall win the war. If we can get back at least some of the high enthusiasm and idealism of 1914, we shall also win the peace which will follow it. But if we sacrifice the blood and treasure of this Empire for a mere return to the status quo ante, then England, though great to all outward appearance and victorious in battle, will never again be a great nation among the nations of the world. We must take into our hearts the high aspirations and noble ideals of those who have fought in the line and of those who have died. They did not fight for wealth or for comfort, but for truth and for justice, for the defence of the weak against the oppression of the strong, and for the destruction of the old ideas which have brought forth war. War may not be destroyed for ever by this war, but it will have received a staggering blow. The subsequent peace in course of time may banish it for ever from the earth."
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