The Ypres Times.
61
was ruled by those who with a great effort of imagination and effort of will had made a
peace, for demobilised soldiers, at all events, worse to bear than civilian's life during the war.
According to the highest military authorityseventeen causes of war exist on the
European Continent to-day. The cleavage between what used, to be called the classes
and the masses has been assisted by Russian gold, by Bolshevist missionaries and by the
just indignation of fighting men with whom their country's broken faith. Such is the
knowledge possessed by the ex-fighting man.
Now a word on the civil population. Taxed not only to the limit of its income,
but in many cases paying taxes out of savings, the civilian is distraught with despair
at the present and grave apprehension to the future of his country.
A hundred years ago a similar feeling pervaded this country. It was not so universal
or so intense as the widespread discontent with the injustice that prevails to-day. The
average working man, middle-class man and landowner or rich merchant are good fellows
but being plunged in a sea of trouble they naturally think of their personal affairs before
they think of ex-service men's troubles.
What is wrong with our country to-day is that Parliament has been the friend of
our enemies and the enemy of our friends. It has held on to the places which do not
belong to uslike Judea and Mesopotamia and abandons the places upon which the
existence of our Empire depends. Ireland, Egypt, India and their ocean Trade Routes
all converging upon the Atlantic coast of Ireland which has been abandoned to Republican
enemies. The ex-soldier knows these facts as well as I do or any other civilian, but many
of us are bent upon justice to the ex-soldierespecially soldiers of the Salient.
Our numbers are growing. We are getting a hearing. The best friends of the
civilians are the seamen and soldiers who prevented the scuppering of our villages and
towns and who thrust their souls and bodies between our girls and the enemy. The
mind of the ex-soldier is a factor of supreme importance which civilians in and out of
Parliament will study to their own advantage.
POST-WAR POLITICIANS.
THE POLITICIANS
Drawn by W. Heath Robinson.
