PACIFISTS AT WAR MR. J. WHITE (247 Jersey Road, Osterley,
Middlesex) writes : " We have the amazing spectacle of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, and Mr. A. J. Cook applying methods to the country's undoing and using terms which ten years ago were anathema to them both. In the dark War days, Mr. MacDonald's contemplated visit to the Continent had to be abandoned, and his plans for the country's further disservice temporarily postponed, because no British seaman would sail with him—a comment of some pungency on his defeatist activities at the time. Mr. Cook's contribution in the national emergency consisted of evading service, and stirring up strife which prolonged the War, and sowed the seeds of the present dissension. Yet men with such a record, remembered by thousands who helped rather than hindered, have the audacity to-day to use war- like terms which they should be ashamed to utter. Mr. MacDonald says : ' the war will go on,' and Mr. Cook estab- lishes his preposterous ' general council of war.' What is to be the result of this fresh activity ? A travelling circus, headed by its proprietor in cap and bells, may be vastly enter- taining, but the clown's cudgel is mischievously weighted. One thing is certain—the leopard has not changed his spots ; now, as then, the consequences will fall upon others. Even as Mr. Cook, when he had the chance of his life of being useful, cried : ' Take my brother, take my mother, but for God's sake don't take me,' so, at this present moment, and in the weeks to come if his ' campaign ' meets with any temporary success, it will be the miners and other workers, and their respective families who must suffer, until at last a peace of exhaustion comes, in which no ' indemnity ' can be extracted from anyone."
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