176 PEACE ESTABLISHMENTS 



to their professional pay. In these days, since the fashion has 

 come into vogue of accepting words in non-natural senses 

 since the difference between truth and falsehood has come to 

 be regarded as a matter of less marked import than it would 

 have been some few years ago, it may be necessary to state 

 that one need not use the words secret committee in any ideal, 

 oblique, reserved, or non-natural sense. An outside critic 

 desires the reader to understand that he has seen, touched, 

 perused, handled, stared, and wondered as stare and wonder 

 well he might at a certain printed War-office document, in 

 which it is stated, literce non rident, Horace testifies, or assur- 

 edly the letters of the print of the testimony would blush, 

 wherein it is stated that such and such an invention, delibe- 

 rated upon by the Ordnance Select Committee, and recom- 

 mended for adoption, has not been adopted, for the reason 

 that the secret committee condemned it ! 



The secret committee ! Are we Englishmen, or Venetians, 

 or Japanese, or what 1 Who are, or were, the members of this 

 secret committee ? What is it or was it 1 Where does it or 

 did it sit ? What are or were its functions and organisation 1 

 Not at all surprising will it be to discover that English people, 

 reading these plain English words, pause at the confidence 

 with which this thing is asserted. No wonder ; but of this 

 one thing be assured, if what any outside critic should assert 

 to be true, should happen not to be true, there will be some- 

 body in authority coming forward to impeach his testimony. 



Fortunately, in regard to the outside critic himself, 

 though unfortunately in regard to all such as might desire to 

 impeach his record, he has the incriminatory document at 

 this moment before him, and is willing to show it, if called on, 

 to any member of the legislature who may see fit to demand 

 information of the minister of war in relation to the exist- 

 ence and organisation of this controlling secret committee. 



Until the mystery of this secret committee is wholly re- 

 vealed ; until the organisation of it is wholly abolished, and 



