From ‘Compulsory Inoculation’, The Spectator, 13 February 1915:
IT is a little difficult to keep one’s patience with the Government’s attitude towards compulsory inoculation. It is a capital example of “Letting ‘I dare not’ wait up ‘I would,’ like the poor cat i’ the adage.” “The cat would eat fish, and would not wet her feet.”
The Government would like to knock enteric out altogether from the list of serious Army diseases. They know that they can do so and ought to do so, but they have not done so as yet because they do not want to wet their feet politically—i.e., antagonize the faddists of their party. In reality the Government have hardly anything to be afraid of—something even leas than the pin-prick of the inoculation needle, which, for some inscrutable reason, is so much dreaded by a large portion of the male population of these islands.
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