Sta,—The public should be grateful to you for publishing two
such level-headed letters on this subject as those written by Mr. G. Owles and Sir C. H. Robinson in your issue of December zsth. Both should go far to clear away misleading slogans so dear to high-brows who lead sheltered lives.
In the issue of your paper of December 29th Mr. Watson protests against the criticism of the League of Nations Union " as being composed of old ladies " and asks that its record should be examined.
People with short memories will have forgotten its " Peace Ballot propaganda " with its anti-rearmament bias, which lost Mr. Ramsay MacDonald's Government the Fulham by-election, fought on the Peace Ballot anti-rearmament ticket, and which delayed our rearmament programme by about six years by getting eleven million citizen voters to sign the peace pledge. Does Mr. Watson remember this? Surely to start a Peace Ballot in the most peaceful country in the world was a sad waste of time and money? The thousands of pounds wasted in getting eleven million people to sign the pledge, after house-to-house canvassing, would have set " the Jarrow distressed area " on its legs. Three canvassers tried to get my signature, and it rather struck me that they were working on a commission basis.
Is it impossible that this " peace propaganda " had something to do with creating the idea that " Britain would never, never
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