Freedom to Read Week: Generals Die in Bed (II)

The Ottawa Citizen, 2 June 1930

LONDON, June 2 – Slurs on British generals and attacks on the behavior of Canadian troops as set forth in the book by Charles Yale Harrison, "General's Die in Bed," are repudiated in the press today by Lieut.-Colonel Colin Harding of the Fifteenth Royal Warwickshire Regiment, who served in the First Canadian Division in France and was closely allied with the Canadians throughout the war.

He wants to know why the author should wait twelve years to smudge the memory of fifty-six thousand Canadians who lost their lives fighting for the British Empire and discredit the services of those who survived. As for the alleged looting of Arras, Col. Harding demands the author's authority for the incident, and also for the alleged shooting down of defenceless German prisoners in revenge for torpedoing of the hospital ship Llandovery Castle. The colonel thinks that such books show the necessity for censorship before they are offered to the public as they are calculated to provoke ill-feeling between nations and act as a deterrent to peace.