Page:Britain's Deadly Peril.djvu/112

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106
BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL

hands of a special authority devoted to it alone, and responsible to Parliament. As things stand, the country is certainly in agreement with Mr. Bonar Law in believing that the Government "have not sufficiently realised the seriousness of this danger, and have not taken every step to make it as small as possible." Most people will agree with Mr. John S. Scrimgeour, who, commenting upon the shuffling of the Government, said:

"Let the Press cease from blaming the strikers. Also let 'the men in power' cease from their censuring, for very shame. Can I, or any man in the street, believe that we are 'fighting for our lives' while the enemy lives contentedly among us? Read the debate, and take as samples mentioned therein—'Brother of the Governor of Liége,' 'German Financial Houses,' and 'Baron von Bissing.' Don't make scapegoats of these working-men, or even of the non-enlisting ones, while such is the case. Neither they, nor any one else in his senses, can believe in the seriousness of this 'life struggle' while the above state of things continues. It is laughable—or deadly."

The Intelligence Department of the War Office—that Department so belauded by Mr. McKenna—certainly did not display an excess of zeal in the case of signalling in Surrey, for, to my two letters begging that inquiry be made as a matter of urgency, I was not even vouchsafed the courtesy of a reply. Yet I was not surprised, for in a case at the end of January in which two supposed Belgian refugees, after living in one of our biggest seaports and making many inquiries there, being about to escape to Antwerp, I warned that same Department and urged that they should be questioned before leaving London. I gave every detail, even to the particular