WCP2804

[1]¹

Morland,

Chislett Road,

West Hampstead.N.W

Mar 25^th 1901

Dear M^r. Wallace:

In reply to yours of 22^nd, let me say that you are entirely welcome, so far as I am concerned, to the use of the cuts you desire. I have written to Mess^rs Macmillans to say so. I believe their practice is to require acq acknowledgement of the service.

I was a great pleasure to me to hear from you of your son's progress in his profession. His American experience would do him no harm as an electrical engineer. [2]² Now as to your last point touching this miserable war. Is there no one who is clear—sighted ^enough, single—minded enough, patriotic enough, to point out to our country men, with an authority that will command respect and attention, how utterly they have been taken in over this deplorable business? The prestige of England has been miserably damaged, her good name for honesty and love of liberty sorely smirched, by the deeds of the past two year. Two years, I put it, because these miserable three months before the war, when lies ran rampant, and Chamberlain was alternately blustering and cringing, were to me real days of humiliation. Never in my time has England stooped so low as under this blundering and shortsighted "politician". His extraordinary vanity, dominating his real ability, makes him fancy himself to be a leader, when he is in truth the veriest tool. Posing as a strong man he is simply led by the nose of the the ultra—military gang of unscrupluous financial adventurers. The press, from The Times downwards has been so astutely nobbled [hobbled?] that they it really believes itself to have been patriotic in crying up the war. And [4] as for the Church — its state is truly deplorable. I have seldom read anything more literally blasphemous than the sermon of the (now) Bishop — Elect of London, to the newly-returned "C.I.V"'s.³ And the wilds howls that greeted Dean Kitchin when he dared to disapprove the scenes of orgie that celebrated the departure of the troops, still ring in my ears. I love my country too well not to feel these things as immeasurably sad. But saddest of all is that so very few of us can even begin to see that there is anything deplorable about them.

Pray speak out, and fear not, as to this sickening and saddening blot on the Wonderful Country.

Believe me, | Yours most truly, | Silv. Thompson [signature]