"as more exposed" than others "to suffering and distress,"
is

"Hence, also, more alive to tenderness."

This tribute to the moral nature of the Warrior, whether his warfare
be on land or on sea or in the air, is as true to-day as when Wordsworth
paid it. The brutal and senseless cry for "reprisals" which of late
has risen from some tainted spots of the Body Politic will wake
no response unless it be an exclamation of disgust from soldiers
and sailors and airmen. Of course, everyone knows that there is a
sense in which reprisals are a necessary part of warfare. Generation
after generation our forefathers fought bow to bow and sword to
sword and gun to gun against equally armed and well-matched foes;
this was reprisal, or, if you prefer, retaliation. And when, in more
recent times, the devilish ingenuity of science invented poisonous
gas, there was nothing unmanly or unchivalrous in retorting on
our German enemies with the hideous weapon which they had first
employed.

But this is not the kind of reprisal which indurated orators demand.
They contend that because the Germans kill innocent civilians,
and women, and little children in English streets, Englishmen are
to commit the same foul deeds in Germany. "It is hard," says the
_Church Times_, "to say whether futility or immorality is the more
striking characteristic of the present clamour for reprisals in
the matter of air-raids.... Mr. Joynson Hicks would 'lay a German
town in ashes after every raid on London,' and he is not much worse
than others who scream in the same key." Nay, he is better than
many of them. The people who use this language are not the men
of action. They belong to a sedentary and neurotic class, who,
lacking alike courage and mercy, gloat over the notion of torture
inflicted on the innocent and the helpless.

A German baby is as innocent as an English baby, a German mother
is as helpless as an English mother; and our stay-at-home heroes,
safely ensconced in pulpits or editorial chairs, shrilly proclaim
that they must be bombed by English airmen. What a function to
impose on a band of fighters, peculiarly chivalrous and humane!

I refer to the pulpit because one gross and disgusting instance
of clerical ferocity has lately been reported. A raving clergyman
has been insolently parodying the Gospel which he has sworn to
preach. Some of the newspapers commended his courage; and we do
not know whether his congregation quitted the church or his