" SALUS REIPUBLICAE "
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] - SIR,—Your correspondent, Mr. Ian C. Currey, deduces from
my' contribution to yoirr columns that --I regard " a direct national interest " as the only " moral issue " for which we should ask the rank and file in this country to fight. My
views are, in effect, those of Professor G. P. Gooch :
" Tho supreme obligation of a State to survive may involve decisions which an individual might feel bound on ethical grounds to reject . . . The individual may sacrifice his life : the community must live on. A tiustee cannot surrender an estate which is not his own. In other words the action of a Government within certain limits is determined by considerations of what we may call a bio- logical rather than a moral order."
As for my " attack " on Education and Social Legislation it was confined to the growing application of compulsion to the working classes in matters in which I believe them to be Ale to decide better than many " social reformers." I have been, and am, in these matters more active than some of my critics, but, as Erasmus remarks, compreising a colurrm of argument into a sentence, dulce bellum Mei-perils.' Your obedient
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