I have often wondered whether the men and women who lent themselves casually to “hatred stunts” during the war ever realised what cruel suffering was caused to a large number of humble and obscure folk. Now that the spirit of sanity and moderation is making itself heard again, English people must surely look back with shame on the treatment meted out to inoffensive enemy aliens. Busybodies obsessed by spy mania were merely a source of nuisance and ridicule to the Secret Service. That Service was highly efficient, and its agents were quite capable of doing their work without the interference of officious amateurs. The German wife and the English woman with a German husband were in many cases treated as outcasts. Years of residence in England, even the fact of children fighting with the British Army, did not serve in many cases to mitigate the violence and hatred of their neighbours. The German wives of English subjects, and the English wives of Germans, were naturally in a painful and trying position and one which was bound to excite prejudice. The degree, however, to which a group of men within Parliament, and a section of the Press without, sought deliberately to inflame the lowest passions of the mob in this matter, is the most sordid page in the history of the war. Helpless, friendless, without money, unable to make their voices heard, these unhappy people, treated as pariahs both in the land of their birth and in that of their adoption, were hunted from pillar to post. Periodically “intern-them-all” campaigns were worked up which led to obscure Germans of proved respectability being locked up. Many of these people had English wives and families, who suffered severely through the removal of the breadwinner. English women were forced to take refuge in Germany from the persecutions of their own countrymen. What are we to think of the spirit and policy which could drive from the shores of England--England the home of Liberty, England the safe asylum of the oppressed--women of our own race who found the treatment meted out to them too hard to be endured? Wives and families landed in Germany not speaking one word of the language, to be welcomed naturally by a spirit as hard and bitter as any they had left. The lot of English wives resident in Germany was unenviable. But I do not gather that enemy aliens were treated with a greater measure of harshness in Germany during the war than what occurred in England. Many English women living in Germany throughout the war did not suffer in any marked degree from the hostility of their neighbours. Naturally these would-be pogroms never catch the right person. Rich people who may be really mischievous escape; the poor man is hunted. The Junkers whom it would be satisfactory to punish are living in comfort and prosperity on their estates. The poor starve and are driven down into inconceivable depths of misery both of body and soul.