AN EYE FOR AN EYE AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.

Free Lance, Volume XV, Issue 800, 29 October 1915, Page 8

AN EYE FOR AN EYE AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH.

Reprisals—and Why Not? LORD Bryce is an amiable, wellmeaning humanitarian, a deeplylearned man, a man who has, in his day, done good service to his country. But, when he "protests" 'against the quite natural, and* to our mind, justifiable demands of the British public for anti-Zeppelin reprisals, be is on a very bad wicket. He prates about the sacredness of the Hague Convention, and says that to "initiate savagery would lower us to the level of the Germans." But the Hague Convention has long ago been proved to be not worth the paper it was written on. Why should Britain'be bound by any agree-"" ment which the enemy cynically ignores? It is all very fine to talk about lowering ourselves to the German level, but it is all very silly. When a man attacks you with a poisoned dagger, it is simply insanity to go forward" to meet him with a willow wand or a swagger cane. * * * * As to the Zeppelin attacks on. London, the public has a right to expect

and to demand reprisals. The only wayof coping with the campaign of "frightfulness" is to adopt exactly similarmethods. If hundreds of poor people, non-combatant men and women —and children—are killed in London by Zeppelin bombs, then let Cologne and Hamburg—both quite easily to be reached by British air-craft—be subjected to a similar experience. Early in the war, Lord Bryce, who was alwaysa peace-at-any-price man, resigned from the British Government because he did not "approve" of the war. Whether he approves or does not approve of" a policy of reprisals really does not matter. "An eye for an eye and a "tooth for a. tooth" is-the policy of which nineEnglishmen out of ten approve, and as an ardent advocate of democratic principles, Lord Bryce must recognise that majorities rule. Con an Doyle, a man-: of the world, one far more in touch with , the people than is the academic Bryce*. is on the right track, when he-says' that we are fully justified in laying 'certain, towns in. ruins in order to compel a cessation of the 'Zeppelin/ attacks. Whyshow any consideration for a nation which applauds wholesale murder and oositively chortles with joy when English children are blown to pieces by shells and bombs ? Meet the Hun with his_ own weapons. It is not England which "initiated savagery" but Germany.