WHY THE HUN SHOULD PAY.

Hokitika Guardian, 13 December 1918, Page 4

WHY THE HUN SHOULD PAY.

A CANADIAN SOLDIER’S REASONS. No oue could call me bloodthirsty. lam the most peaceable of men. I am not vindictive, and I think I may sav that I seldom harbour illfeeling in my heart. But—l loathe a Hun. “Why?” I’ll tell you. * # * » # Outside a pretty little bungalow in a tree-bordered street in Victoria, 8.C., hangs a red flag. There is a sale on. That was my home. People are inside there bargaining for our little household treasures. Cautious housewives are fingering carpets and curtains and appraising their value. A fat old dealer is trying to convince his pal that my priceless Sheffield plate soup tureen is not genuine.. There is a man carrying away my child’s cot. I've 110 home now. All the little store of books I treasured so is gone. My wife is living in a boardinghouse, aud the youngster lias 110 nursery now. We’ve sold up so that I may join the —th Battalion. The Hun must pay me for that — must make what reparation can be made lor breaking up my home; for all the heavy heartaches we had jn parting from our treasures. "SF I am standing in the British military cemetery at Bailleul. It is June, 1917. I have found what I sought. A simple mound with a little plain wooden cross at the head of it. My younger brother liesther.e. Five years ago he came out to British Columbia to me—as fine a lad as you could meet. He had just leit school. A clean, wholesome product of an. English public school. In 1914 lie left his jobsurveying—aud enlisted. He served eight months as a private in France, got a commission, aud, within lour months, his company. Two days before his 21st birthday —in June, 1916—hewas goingrouud the line at “ stand-.t0.” A sinner’s bullet hit him square in the forehead—the next day they brought him here. It was a Hun’s hand that pulled that trigger. Do you suppose I’ll meet a Huu again when peace comes, with the haunting feeling that the hand I shook in greeting might be the hand that pulled that trigger ? They can’t give back that young life —but they still have “ eyes to weep with.” Make them weep ! * * *- » * All 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 stops aud listens. He can just hear a distant rumble—far, far away to the south. “The guns in France or Belgium,” he 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 liis hair to silver, taken all the joy ot life from his eyes. He is only one of millions. The Huns cannot make the old man young again, cannot restore the boy they stole from him. But even their brutal instincts eau be made to realise how all decent people loathe a murderer. Make them feel it!