3 APRIL 1915, Page 12

OUR PACIFICISTS.

[To TIrs ED1T011 Or res ..EirscrAr0...9 B ra,—On March 27th you justly remarked that Sir Edward Grey "never forgot, as so many of our Pacificista forget, that we have allies." You might have added that even professed Pacificiste and Feminists in France and Belgium passionately assert that there must be no talk of peace till the territory of which their countries have been robbed is cleared of the enemy. A characteristic example is the speech delivered to the French League for the Rights of Women by Madame Maria Verone, the well-known avocate, last week. Madame Timone is a Socialist, a Feminist, and a Paoificist. But she refuses to cry peace where there is no peace, and being, like most Frenchwomen, a practical person, she recognizes that irresponsible peace proposals at a critical time may operate as an encouragement to the Germane to continue the struggle. If any one wishes to know why French and Belgian women desire no parleying with the Germans while they still hold the prey they treacherously and brutally captured, he can hardly do better than procure Lady Lugard's admirable paper on " The Work of the War Refugees Com- mittee," read to the Royal Society of Arte on March 24th. It is not for us to approach the aggressors vetati ramie oleae, veniamque rogantes. As Madame Verona says, " si Pon eetinm que les Mumma peuvent avoir aseez d'influence sue lee gouvernementa pour arrfiter la guerre, eh Bien, que lee lemmas allemandes commencent I" Academia suggestions of terms of peace on our part may well be resented by French and Belgian women whose temper is that of Madame Verone. Let us reflect what we should think (and what the Germans would probably think) of French peace proposals if Oxford and Cambridge were in German hands, if (which God forbid !) English women and children had suffered as the women and children of our allies have suffered.-1 am, Sir, &c,

J. D. A.