MESSRS. CADBURY'S CRITICS.
(To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR.") Sta,—As the British Empire Union has issued a leaflet showing Messrs. Cadbury's donations to what is euphemistically called "The Society of Friends' Emergency Committee," perhaps you will allow me to comment on the firm's explanation.
The leaflet states that the Committee exists to assist "alien enenties in this country, interned and uninterned;" and makes no mention of prisoners of -war. Messrs. Cadbury put forward the customary plea that the funds of this " alien enemy" Committee are virtually entirely expended on women and children, most of them English-born, who would otherwise be destitute. That is not the case. The wives and children of interned Germans are in receipt of allowances, and Boards of Guardians have on occasion complained that these are demanded as a right, regardless of other sources of income, so that these women are placed at times in a better position than our own poor. Further, the Committee state in their own Report for the year ending June, 1916, the latest in my possession, that more than -C9,000 was spent on grants to the camps, and therefore not on women and children at all. What proportion of Messrs. Cadbury's donations was expended in this way it is impossible to say, but one donation of £210 from that firm is marked (C), which initial means that it was given especially for the camps. Altogether about £14,000 has been raised by this Emergency Committee up to July, 1916, for the benefit of enemy aliens, in addition, apparently, to extensive assistance from America, then a neutral country. Yet it is admitted by American and neutral obeervers that all necegsarie3 and many comforts are provided in these camps by the Government, while in Germany our prisoners are in danger of starving to death, and in Belgium, Serbia, Poland, and Armenia the victims of German cruelty are dying in thousands from sheer destitution. Under such circum- stances cannot Messrs. Cadbury and the Society of Friends realize that their extraordinary tenderness for alien enemies living under admittedly fair conditions is an outrage on the feelings of the Honorary Secretary. The British Empire Onion. 346 Strand, W.C. S.
[Messrs. Cadbury have made large donations to a variety of
funds, most of which command the approval of oven Messrs. Cadbury's strongest critics. If it is thought worth while to criti- cize the particular allocation of this money, it should at least Lae remembered that Messrs. Cadbury are Quakers and cannot he judged on ordinary grounds. In any case "outrage" seems to us in the circumstances an ill-chosen word.—En. Spectator.]
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