inoculation and vaccination both in the regular army and the
Territorials is such as only a few stalwarts are able to resist, is
deeply resented. At present the inoculation mania has reached the pitch
of proposing no less than four separate inoculations: revaccination,
typhoid, cholera, and--Sir Almroth's last staggerer--inoculation against
wounds! When the War Office and its medical advisers have been
successfully inoculated against political lunacy, it will be time enough
to discuss such extravagances. Meanwhile, the sooner the War Office
issues a proclamation that no recruit will be either compelled or
importuned to submit to any sort of inoculation whatever against his
will, the better for the recruiting, and the worse for the enemy.

*The War Office Bait of Starvation.*

But this blunder was a joke compared to the next exploit of the War
Office. It suddenly began to placard the country with frantic assurances
to its five-thousand-a-year friends that they would be "discharged with
all possible speed THE MINUTE THE WAR IS OVER." Only considerations of
space restrained them, I presume, from adding "LAWN TENNIS, SHOOTING,
AND ALL THE DELIGHTS OF FASHIONABLE LIFE CAN BE RESUMED IMMEDIATELY ON
THE FIRING OF THE LAST SHOT." Now what does this mean to the wage
worker? Simply that the moment he is no longer wanted in the trenches he
will be flung back into the labour market to sink or swim without an
hour's respite. If we had had a Labour representative or two to help in
drawing up these silly placards--I am almost tempted to say if we had
had any human being of any class with half the brains of a rabbit
there--the placards would have contained a solemn promise that no single
man should be discharged at the conclusion of the war, save at his own
request, until a job had been found for him in civil life. I ask the
heavens, with a shudder, do these class-blinded people in authority
really intend to take a million men out of their employment; turn them
into soldiers; and then at one blow hurl them back, utterly unprovided
for, into the streets?

But a War Office capable of placarding Lord Roberts's declaration that
the men who are enlisting are doing "what all able-bodied men in the
kingdom should do" is clearly ignorant enough for anything. I do not
blame Lord Roberts for his oratorical flourish: we have all said things
just as absurd on the platform in moments of enthusiasm. But the
officials who reproduced it in cold