AN ESSENTIAL TOWARDS NATIONAL HARMONY. (To ran EDITOR or THE
"SPECTATOR."]
Sus,—Day I trespass once more on your hospitality briefly to reply to Colonel Chrystie's letter in your last issue? If he will care to read my pamphlet, Colonel Chrystie will see that I have laid special stress on the goodwill existing both between our officers and men on service, and between our wounded and those minister- ing to them, in whatever way, in the hospitals, urging that no time should be lost in utilizing it, so to speak, as a leaven with which it may be possible to leaven the whole notion. But in the meanwhile it will be of no use our arguing from the particular to the general. Immensely as our Army has been now increased, it still represents but a fraction of the nation, and it is in respect of the remainder that it behoves us to provide against the now ever- growing dangers of class estrangement, discontent, and unrest. There are said to be, for example, half a million of young men alone who are at present availing themselves of every possible excuse for keeping out of the Army. Can we look with confidence to such as are in this frame of mind to uphold the unity and glory of our democracy in the future ? Again, there can on the other hand unfortunately be no doubt—one meets with instances of it in almost every drawing-room one enters—that, even wills regard to the working and visiting at hospitals, a large number of our more well-to-do and better-educated people (I will spare Colonel Chrystie the "snobbish" expression "upper classes") have long since tired of "doing their bit" in this way, and are trying to salve their consciences with the assertion that the " Tummies" don't like being bothered. This does not seem to point to that happy fusion of classes which all of us would like to see as having been anything like completed as yet. And in the very matter of the wounded themselves, on whose cheerfulness and gratitude per se Colonel Chrystie bases such hopes, how long are they likely unsupported to retain that cheerfulness and gratitude —letting alone any question of their communicating them to their relations and friends—in face of the shabby treatment that is being meted out to them by the powers that be when they are discharged? I am afraid I cannot join with Colonel Chrystie in crying "Peace!" when there is so obviously no peace--I am,
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