SIR, —" Janus's " criticism of this Federation has produced some
enlightening statements from its members or sympa- thisers, but none more typical of their mentality than that of the correspondent in your issue of January 19th, who hails from Balliol College and who speaks of the war as " Mr. Chamberlain's war." That expression is an outrage upon the feelings of every decent-minded citizen who knows how up to the very last moment the Prime Minister, in the face of severe criticism, laboured for peace ; and it will fill many an old Oxford man like myself with shame that the system of education at their University should be capable of producing such an example of mental obliquity.
But we must allow our indignation to be tempered by the hope that, as soon as they are a little older and have acquired a little more knowledge and experience of the world, enabling them to see things as they are, and not, as in their blind hatred of the institutions of their country, they imagine them to be, these young men will be ashamed that they should ever have allowed themselves to indulge in such perversions of the truth.
One wonders, indeed, what even their feelings must be towards their Russian friends and prototypes now engaged in the hideous bombing of women and children in the open towns and villages of Finland. Perhaps, when they have learnt that it is to this goal that both Communism and Nazism are leading the world, they will begin to feel a little more respect for the freedom and ideals of British democracy and to thank God they are British citizens.—Yours faithfully,
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