THE NEED FOR A BRITISH LEGION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR,"]
SAL—Permit a very old student of the columns of the Spectator to express hearty approval of the suggestion con- veyed in the article under the above heading in your issue at the 24th inst., and the earnest hope that it may lead to an organization such as you so forcibly advocate. Those of its who are honestly convinced that the commercial and financial regeneration of our country depends absolutely on bard work. great production, and fair (but not extravagant) cost, and that the propaganda of so-called " Labour " (setting class against class, with persistent effort to imbue workers with the theory that far less work and greatly higher wages is the road to national prosperity) can only lead to disaster and misery, ie which the workers must, inevitably, be the chief victims, can only wish for speedy success to a movement calculated to expose throughout the country and the world such futile fallacy and the real objects of its advocates.
The various existing organizations to which your article fefers, most of which I have joined, and some of which are excellent, do not reach the great mass of the people, whose chief needs are honest instruction and guidance in highly technical and difficult problems. There must, of course, be some central organization, not necessarily expensive or with a large staff. The real work must be aeccfniplished in every town and village where local branches can be established, and by local people, with the utmost freedom of discussion and controversy for all.
Incidentally, a very great advantage—possibly the greatest--
will be the enabling of various "classes " in the country to know each other and learn that "Labour," apart front the political brand and professional misleaders, is highly and properly appreciated and respected; while even the so-called "idle rich" comprises numerous great workers, and right good and useful fellows, who have done, and are daily doing, excellent work for their country, generally to the great benefit of all as well as of themselves; and that only a very limited few comprise the loafing spendthrifts generally produced for execration by the political stump orator-sirs fact, to quote EOM* lines the authorship of which I do not recollect,
"There is so much bad in the best of us, And so much good in the worst of us, That it ill behoves any of us To find any fault with the rest of us."
In conclusion, in the event of your suggestion coming to fruition I shall be very happy to subscribe substantially to the necessary Fund, and to undertake to establish a branch in thi P.S.—Would not some of our legislators be better employed in instructing the people all over the country than in doing practically nothing in 'Westminster beyond walking int,. lobbies with ovine docility?
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