is satisfactory that Sir John Simon has been able forcibly to draw ublic attention to the reckleamees which seems to afflict a certain school Jof thought in advocating peace policies. The abuses of the armament traffic may be serious enough without justifying lurid adventures Into the wildest fights of imagination in stirring up public opinion. It is fatuous to attempt to strip every conceivable Virtue from men who are engaged in the manufacture of commodities which, in times of war, are essential to the national existence. Tt {s equal fatuous to assume that such ocjeupations lead we grossly anti-social practices and conspiracies, Yet dissemination of this sort of view has Inspired the recklessness of statement which Sir John 0 effectively has exposed, to the public benefit, It perhhaps may not be irrelevant to observe that publishers might take note of this erratic tendency. They would then refuse to give their countenance to those would-be sensational works Jof alleged fiction whick, although patently perverted efforts of a crude imagination, affect to be based on some resemblance to actuality. Thus. general charges of corrupt habits are made against Governments and armament "kings" are pictured as pre-pesterous ogres. equipped -with every form of degraded taste and passion, possessing the uncanny power of pantomime demons and yet lacking suflcient brains to perceive that, by plunging the world into ruins, ihey Would be.quite unable to enjoy the l-gotten gains amassed by their chicanery and disregard of public decency. The armament problem is 30 vital a factor in the discussion of the world's efforts for avoiding war, that Judierous writings of that kind should be sedulously discouraged, if only because to an uninstructed section of the public they might appear {to be based on what could, by some
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.