A crime against their own people

THE Shot at Dawn campaign for pardons for the 306 soldiers shot for cowardice and desertion by the British army in World War I has now been under way for no less than 14 years.

It is a campaign that is eminently worthy of public support. The policy of shooting one’s own volunteers is indefensible, and was indefensible in 1914 (as comparison with the practice of the Australians and the Germans makes indisputably clear).

The legal procedures adopted were often hasty and ill-considered (for the object was not justice, but example).