ITo rue EDITOR or TEE SPECTATOR.”] Sea, — .1 have just returned
to tire pleasure of the old Spectator by my own fireside. Most of your readers must have read their old friend by the light of the penny dip until "Lights Out," and now back again to the old home and—strikes! Coming home from the Palace, three of the boys were talking of some old chums being sent with ball-cartridge on a certain peace journey. " That's the staff to give 'em," said one, and there was a general nod of approval in the usual soldier's style. Feasibly, when they get into "civvies" their views are modi- fied, had call them back to khaki and the boys will want to dump a few of the leaders—somewhere in London.
It would be hard indeed to put in a short letter the desires and wishes of "Tommy," but he does at least want peace, and he means a real peace. He hasn't come home, as agitators tell you, to fight the capitalist—some of our clever intellectuals who spell it with a capital may hoodwink some of the boys, but they won't hoodwink all the boys. If the Army has taught him anything, it hes taught bins to play the game, and it is no use promising him a new -heaven and earth with the gullies still full of ditch-water. We thought the storm had cleared out the gullies and the croakers had gone home—" rubbed out," as "Tommy" says by the camp fire; instead they are posing as our friends! Well, they will have some stronger personali- ties to meet to-day than they met in 1913 and before. That will lie the greatest changeof all, and a close observer must have noticed the change in the boys in "civvies," but to-slay they want peace and the cultivation of peace. Yes, we went peace. .4 real peace, a peace which in that new and stronger per- sonality our people will recognise the return of an old friend. Problems will cores along, but for the moment in at least one " Tommy's " heart their still beats the niacin of as article in my old friend Met November—" Thanks be to God."—I am,
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