2 AUGUST 1919, Page 3

Meanwhile one cannot be surprised at reading such a letter

as that which was written to the Morning Post of Tuesday by Mr. H. B. Marriott-Watson. Mr. Marriott-Watson says :—

"I write, Sir, as a father whose only son fell in the terrible retreat from St. Quentin in March, 1918. The Fifth Army, under General Gough, was covering a sector of • forty miles, and the Germans had 40 divisions to our 14. The brigades had been each reduced by one battalion ; and no reinforcements were sent out by England. Yet we are told by Mr. Lloyd George that Sir Henry Wilson knew in January, 1918, that 100 German divisions were to attack the British front. I want to ask this questions which has been I doubt not, on the lips of every father and mother who lost sons in that disaster : Can any one tell me who was responsible that the 300;000 men in England, pushed out to France immediately after the disaster, were not in France in time to meet the German invasion 7 "