blood would have us believe that
soldiers live on air; that ammunition drops from heaven like manna; and
that an army could hold the field for twenty-four hours without the
support of a still more numerous body of civilians working hard to
support it. Sane men gasp at such placards and ask angrily, "What sort
of fools do you take us for?" I have in my hand a copy of _The Torquay
Times_ containing a hospitable invitation to soldiers' wives to call at
the War Office, Whitehall, S.W., if they desire "assistance and
explanation of their case." The return fare from Torquay to London is
thirty shillings and sixpence third class; but the War Office no doubt
assumes that all soldiers' wives keep motor cars. Still, let us be just
even to the War Office. It did _not_ ask the soldiers' wives for forms
of authorization to pay the separation allowance to their bankers every
six months. It actually offered the money monthly!

*Delusive Promises.*

The middle and upper classes are nearly as bad as the War Office. They
talk of keeping every man's place open for him until the end of the war.
Obviously this is flatly impossible. Some places can be kept, and no
doubt are being kept. Some functions are suspended by the war and cannot
be resumed until the troops return to civil life and resume them.
Employers are so hardened to the daily commercial necessity for
discharging men without a thought as to what is to become of them that
they are quite ready to undertake to sack the replacers when the troops
come back. Also the return of peace may be followed by a revival of
trade in which employment may not be hard to find, even by discharged
soldiers, who are always passed over in the labour market in favour of
civilians, as those well know who have the task of trying to find places
for them. But these considerations do not justify an attempt to persuade
recruits that they can go off soldiering for months--they are told by
Lord Kitchener that it will probably be for years--and then come back
and walk to their benches or into their offices and pick up their work
as if they had left only the night before. The very people who are
promising this are raising the cry "business as usual" in the same
breath. How can business be carried on as usual, or carried on at all,
on unoccupied office stools and at counters with no men behind them?
Such rubbish is an insult to the recruit's intelligence. These promises
of keeping places open were made to the m