"PATRIOT" CRITICISED.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIII, Issue 71, 23 November 1915, Page 2

"PATRIOT" CRITICISED.

[To Th» Editor Stratford Post, j Sir,-—Your correspondent "Patriot," of Stratlimore, must be some recluse of a woodsman who has left "the busy haunts of men, to wield the axe and drive the wedge in yonder forest drear." Otherwise he would see nothing so wonderful in Captain Sanson's having found on Pit-carton racecourse a large number of young men who would have been better at Trentham redeeming the honor of Canterbury and Otago from the slur of having left to the North Island the work of avenging their fallen and of helping to win the war. Nor would he have suggested that the class of men that moved Captain Somson to righteous wrath is to be found at church or buying cows at a saleyard. But in his retirement. "Patriot" has himself made a discovery that is really wonderful and which clears up a mystery that has puzzled strategists from one end of Broadway to the other. Why, we have asked and asked in vain, do not the Allies drive the Germans out of Belgium I-' "Patriot" makes it clear. The Allies have no armies, no armies at all. It is a startling state of things, but "Patriot" is quite clear and conclusive. New Zealand, he states, has done 10 por cent, better than any other country in providing soldiers. Well, according to the latest Government figures, our contribution is rather below ,*? per cent, of our population. Therefore no other country has armed more than 2\ per cent, of its population. France, with a population of '3o millions, hail accordingly, about threequarters oi" a million of soldiers, every man of whom, if the casualty lists do not lie, is dead or wounded. Great Britain, on the same basis, has contributed rather over a million, at least one hall of whom are casualties. We know that of the other half many are in the East and large bodies still at Home. It is therefore impossible that the Allies can have any troops at all in France or Flanders. The question remains as to why the Germans do not resume their march to Paris. Perhaps "Patriot" includes Germany in the other countries that the Dominion has beaten so badly in practical patriotism.—Yours etc., ANOTHER PAL