12 SEPTEMBER 1908, Page 13

ACT FIRST, INQUIRE AFTERWARDS.

[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR?'1

Sin,—The comic report comes to us that a member of the Government, and one likely to have had a great hand in the Pension Bill, having fastened that measure, with its financial burden and political liabilities, on his own country and

Government, has gone to Germany, the great example of the system, to see how it works, and finds that there the Govern- ment pays only for the management, the fund being found by the working men themselves. I have not seen, except in a speech of Lord Rosebery, anything to show that inquiry had been made into the working of the American military pension- list. The results of such an inquiry might have been