7 MAY 1881, Page 3

The thanks of both Houses of Parliament were on Thursday

voted to the soldiers engaged iu the Afghan war. The war was a bad one, immoral in object, reckless in management ; but that was no demerit or business of the soldiers. They did their work well, and as we should never get soldiers did they not believe themselves the objects of special public regard, it was right that they should be thanked. We regret, therefore, that in the Commons Sir Wilfrid Lawson and sonic twenty Radicals objected to the vote, and that the Member for Carlisle took advantage of the occasion to denounce soldiers in the abstract :—" A soldier was a man who made a contract with his country to kill anybody whom his country wished to have killed who was a mere animated machine," and did not deserve honour so much as a policeman. All that is true only in words. A true soldier is a man who risks his life to give his country force, but leaves the use of that force to the judgment of the representatives, who could not consult him without surrendering their own responsibilities. Did Sir Wilfrid Lawson refuse to pay taxes on account of the Afghan war P If he did not, he did just what the soldier does,—that is, he felt it his duty to uphold the social system, even though the force generated by that system was misused.