WHY THE HUN SHOULD PAY

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 63, 9 December 1918, Page 4

WHY THE HUN SHOULD PAY

A CANADIAN SOLDIER'S REASOI®, No one could call me bloodthirsty. I am the most peaceablo of men. lam not vindictive, and I think I may say that I seldom harbour ill-feeling in my heart. But—l loathe a Hun. "Why?" I'll tell you. Outsido a pretty little bungalow in a tree-bordered street in Victoria, 8.C., hangs a rod flag. There is a sale on. That was my home. Poople arc inside there bargaining for our little household "treasures, Cautious housewives aro fingering carpets and curtains and appraising their value. A fat old dealer is trying to convince his pal that my priceless Sheffield plalo 60up tureen is not genuine. There is a man carrying away my child's cot. I've no home now.. All the little store of books I treasurod so is gone. My wife is living in a boardinghouse, and tho youngster lias no nursery now. Wo've sold up 60 that I may join tho —th Battalion. , The Hun must pny me for that— i must make what reparation .can be made for breaking up my home; for all I tho heavy heartaches wo had in parting from our treasures,

I am standing in tho British military cemetery at Bailloul. It is June, 1!>17. I have found what I sought. A simple mound with a little plain wooden cross at the head of it. My younger brother lies there.

Five years ago he came out to British' Columbia to me—as fine a lad as you could meet. He had just left schoolA clean, wholesome product of nn English public school. In 1914 he left his job—surveying—and enlisted. He served oight months as a private in France, got a commission, and, within four months, his company. Two days before his 21st birthday—in June, 1916—he was going round the lino at "stand-to." A seller's bullet hit him square in' the i rehead—tho next dav tliey brought him here. It was a Hun's hand that pulled that trigger. Do you suppose I'll meet a Hun again when fleace comes, with tho haunting feeling that the hand I shook in- greeting might be the hand that pulled that: trigger? They can't givo back that young life— but they still have "eyes to weep with." Make them weep! !An old man is walking slowly up and down the lawn in the garden of a beautiful old Kentish vicarage. It is a still summer night. Hardly a sound, you would say. But the old man 6tops and" listens. He can just hear a distant rumble—far, far away to the south. "Tho guns in France or Belgium." ho would tell you. Day and'night he is listening, listening for that distant rumble. He is my father. . Four years ago I did not consider him on the border of old age. But these years of sorrow and ever-present anxiety, first for two sons and now for one only, have changed him. They have deepened the furrows in his cheeks, have turned his hair to silver, taken all the joy of life from his eyes, He is only one of millions. The Huns cannot make the old man young again; cannot restore the boy they 6tole from him. But even their brutal instincts can be made to realise how all decent people loathe a murderer. .. Make them feel it!