THE COLLEAGUES OF MR. LLOYD GEORGE AND SIR RUFUS ISAACS.
ON Monday the Daily News in a leading article took the Spectator very severely to task for having, as it asserts, misrepresented Mr. Churchill's evidence before the Marconi Committee. The Daily News, by quoting a portion of one of our notes from "News of the Week" without the context, declared that we " fathered " a auestion which "is one of the grossest perversions of a matter of fact to which any controversialist could descend." The quotation from the Spectator made by the • Daily News runs as follows : " If it is so outrageous to suggest the possi- bility of his having done the thing which his colleagues did, how is it that Mr. Winston Churchill finds it com- patible with his honour to remain in the same Cabinet with those colleagues ? That is a question which we can assure Mr. Winston Churchill is passing, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer would say in his pleasant way, from foul lip to foul lip." This makes us appear to have asserted that Mr. Churchill was angry merely because he had been accused of doing the same thing which his col- leagues had done, and that " the same thing " was only the Stock Exchange transactions of his colleagues. We are then told by the Daily News that what Mr. Churchill really complained of was not that anyone should have charged him with having done what his colleagues bad done, but of having stood silent while his friends " came forward and voluntarily disclosed their exact position." That sounds as if the Daily News had caught out the Spectator in a very careless and unfair misrepresenta- tion, and we admit that judged alone by the Daily News quotation we do appear to have been guilty of a bad blunder. If, however, the Daily News, instead of quoting only a portion of our remarks, had given its readers the opportunity to consider the context, they would have seen that the point is a bad one. We distinctly pointed out that Mr. Churchill's grievance was that he was accused of concealment. In the same note, and only three or four lines above the passage quoted by the Daily News, occur these words :— " If Mr. Winston Churchill's outbreak of violent language and violent temper was ill-judged as regards the Committee, it was cruel towards his colleagues. In effect, he worked himself into a positive fury of righteous indignation because anyone should dare to think it possible that he might be concealing anything. Yet his two friends and colleagues had not only done the thing of which he spoke in such scornful terms—bought shares in an over- sea Marconi Company—but had, until circumstances forced the admission, concealed the fact from the House of Commons. The attitude of Mr. Winston Churchill towards the Committee was
indeed the cruellest blow that his colleagues have yet received, but it was also a blow at himself."
Then follow immediately the words which we have quoted above from the Daily News :- "If it is so outrageous to suggest the possibility of his having done the thing which his colleagues did, how is it that Mr. Winston Churchill finds it compatible with his honour to remai in the same Cabinet with those colleagues?"
When the context is quoted it is clear that the words, "having done the thing which his colleagues did," included not merely the purchase of Marconi shares in a company " in some country in the inhabited globe," as Mr. Churchill said with such scorn, but having done what they also did, i.e., concealed the fact from Parliament and the country for many months. In a word, we can only be made out to have seriously misrepresented Mr. Churchill if the words quoted by the Daily News are torn from their context, the context which shows clearly that we had Mr. Churchill's concealment point in mind when we wrote. There remains, however, a small matter. It may be said that what really made Mr. Churchill angry was not being accused of doing what his colleagues had done on the Stock Exchange, and not even being accused of ordinary concealment, but being accused of a particularly mean form of concealment, i.e., concealment when his friends were under fire. If that is the point, we admit on re-reading our remarks that we did not bring it out as we perhaps should have done. But, after all, we cannot feel any very deep sense of shame, nor can we say that Mr. Churchill's honour has suffered by our failure to seize so subtle a point. It is in no case a matter on which to found, as the Daily News does, a charge of bad faith.
It may surprise our readers that we should have taken so much of our space to correct a statement by the Daily News or to justify ourselves from the attack made upon us by that paper. We certainly should not have done so on its merits, and if the action of the Daily News had not thrown a very curious sidelight upon what is in our opinion a matter of very real importance, that is, the attitude which the rest of the Cabinet take towards the action of Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Rufus Isaacs. What made the Daily News so zealously angry we may be sure was not the alleged misrepresentation of Mr. Churchill's evidence but our suggestion that there was a rift, or a difference of opinion, between the members of the Cabinet. The Daily News is known to be the special organ of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his most ardent sup- porter and defender in the Liberal press. Have we not been told in newspaper gossip that one of its staff break- fasts every day during session with the Chancellor of the Exchequer in order that he may keep in touch with the great organ of Liberal opinion whose morning voice con- demns all forms of betting and gambling, but whose evening voice—the Star—gives the best racing tips in London? The Daily News realizes that unless the Cabinet, and the whole Cabinet, stand by the Ministers implicated in the Marconi case through thick and thin, and that there is not the slightest difference, or appearance of difference, of opinion in regard to their conduct, the whole game is up. As we have already noted, the more far-seeing party men are beginning to realize that unless Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Rufus Isaacs hang separately the Cabinet will all hang together. Therefore the slightest suggestion that any member of the Cabinet is saying anything which censures or in the least reflects upon the two Ministers must be treated by Mr. Lloyd George's special champions as the unforgivable sin and trampled upon and denied, even if the denial involves such a use of the artifice of the half-quotation as we have just noted. But though the Daily News is thrown into such paroxysms of terror by the suggestion of any Cabinet Minister directly or indirectly showing a difference of opinion in regard to the purchase of shares in an oversew Marconi Company by the two Ministers in question, it is evident that the time is fast drawing near when not only the Cabinet as an entity but every individual member of the Cabinet will have, willingly or not, to make his choice, and in effect to express his opinion as to whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Attorney-General did or did not do anything unbecoming Ministers or inconsistent with the delicacy and discretion which the whole country is agreed in expecting and demanding from every member of the Cabinet. The colleagues of the Ministers implicated must ultimately do one of two things. They must either condone and so accept full responsibility for the acts of their colleagues, or they must condemn those acts. But remember, if they choose the line of condonation it will not be enough for them to do so in a half-and-half way. To make the condonation good and not merely a veiled form of censure they must be prepared to come forward and say that Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Rufus Isaacs did nothing in the slightest degree unbecoming Ministers of the Crown, and were not guilty of any want of delicacy or discretion. They must be prepared to say that, granted they had themselves had money to invest and liked the security on commercial grounds, they would have been quite prepared to accept the gift of valuable advice which Sir Rufus Isaacs' brother gave Sir Rufus Isaacs, and which Sir Rufus Isaacs gave the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and that in fact they could and would have engaged in the Stock Exchange transactions described before the Committee without the slightest loss of personal honour, i.e., without having done anything that was injurious to the public interest or unbecoming Ministers. If then Sir Edward Grey, Lord Haldane, Mr. McKenna and Mr. John Burns, and the rest of their colleagues are prepared to come forward and in effect tell us that they could, without doing what was wrong or improper, have done what their colleagues did, though we might personally regret their view, and though we might have to remind them of the very different standard which they took up when not a colleague but a political opponent was being criticized in 1900, we should be obliged to admit that the Cabinet solidarity had been preserved, and that, right or wrong on the merits, the Cabinet was, at any rate, doing its duty as it understood it, i.e., was giving a clear lead, and was not attempting to evade that responsibility and unity of action which has proved so valuable in our Constitution, and which in effect is of the essence of our system of government.
Let us now take the other hypothesis. If the rest of the Cabinet find that they cannot condone the actions of their colleagues and cannot say that no harm was done and no bad precedent created, and feel therefore unable to accept their share of the responsibility for what was done, then, of course, the two Ministers implicated must resign. If, on the other hand, the majority of their colleagues are for condonation but one or two members of the Cabinet feel unable to publish to the world that for the future Cabinet Ministers may do with impunity what the two Ministers did, then such dissentient Ministers must clearly resign. If B and C in a Cabinet hold that X and Y, in regard to a point of Ministerial honour and conduct, ought to resign and X and Y do not resign, then B and C have no choice but to resign themselves.
It will probably be said that we are pushing this matter of Ministerial responsibility much too hard, and that there is no necessity whatever why Ministers should be impaled upon the dilemma which we have propounded, and forced either to condone absolutely or condemn absolutely the action of their colleagues. There is plenty of room, it will be said, for any Cabinet Minister who likes to take up the attitude that the whole business has been unfortunate, that the two Ministers were very ill-advised in-their action, but since they did not do anything which was actually illegal or corrupt there is no reason for strong action, and that a Minister may perfectly well remain in the same Cabinet with them though in his heart censuring them for what they have done. He may remain in the Cabinet with them though he may feel that if he himself had been placed in similar circumstances nothing on earth would have induced him to do what they did, either in the matter of investing in Marconi shares in— to use Mr. Churchill's words- " any country of the inhabited globe," or in con- cealing the matter from the House of Commons. They are not their brother Cabinet Ministers' keepers, and need only trouble about the action of such colleagues if it can be proved to have been illegal or actually corrupt.
We venture to say that a very little reflection will show that this attitude, though no doubt it would be one very agreeable to several Ministers, will not prove practicable. Ministers will find, as we have said before, that they must choose between condonation and condemnation. Think for a moment what would happen in the case of the continued inclusion in the Cabinet of Ministers who are not prepared to say that if they had wanted to invest and liked the security they would have done what their two colleagues did without a qualm or without laying themselves open to the censure of any honourable or high-minded man, and, again, that in the matter of concealment or alleged concealment they could have acted exactly as did their colleagues and used exactly the same language as was used by their colleagues in the House of Commons, without the slightest loss of personal honour. The Minister who feels as we have described, and who yet remains in the Cabinet, is in truth setting up a double standard of con- duct and honour in the Government. He is saying, " What Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Rufus Isaacs did was no doubt all right for them, but, of course, it would not have done for me or for So-and-so. We must main- tain a very different standard, and we should not have dreamed of doing what they did." In fact, they would be taking the line: " What is not good enough for us is quite good enough for the present Chancellor of the Exchequer and Attorney-General, and we set no reason, therefore, to censure them." Chastened as the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Attorney- General have been by recent events, and clinging passionately, as they no doubt do, to office, we cannot believe that they would care to hold office on such terms— on terms, that is, of an inferior standard of conduct in matters of Ministerial delicacy and discretion. They would, and indeed must, say to their colleagues : " Either you must support us wholly and all in all, and in effect say that you yourselves could have done what we did without any loss of honour, or you will be in effect joining our enemies and stabbing us in the back." There is no halfway house in the Cabinet on a point of honour. Such matters cannot be refined upon or minimized. Certainly the public as a whole will take this line ; of that there can be no doubt. If then the Ministry determines to record any sort of censure on the conduct of the two Ministers, after the line they have already taken up in Parliament and in the witness-box as to their having done nothing that is the least degree blamable, they must resign. If, on the other hand, the Cabinet refuses all censure of the conduct of the Ministers when such censure is moved in Parliament, then the Cabinet and every member of the Cabinet will, ipso facto, become respon- sible for and must defend the conduct of the two Ministers as becoming to Ministers of the Crown and without offence. We fully admit that this may not seem to be the situation at the present moment, but we are absolutely convinced that when the touchstone is reached, the touchstone of a vote in the House of Commons, Ministers will find that there is no other way out. They must decide, each for himself, whether they are prepared to make the action of the two Ministers a precedent for the future guidance of our rulers, or whether they are not. The only relief possible is the resignation of the Ministers implicated before the vote of censure comes on. That would prevent the creation of the precedent which we dread so greatly being established by a party vote. But what practical chance is there of such resignations ? None whatever, we are sorry to say. Yet undoubtedly resigna- tion now would in reality be far better for the future careers of the two Ministers as well as better for the public interest than the pathetic, nay, desperate attempt to pre- tend that all is well, and that they have done nothing which could possibly call for resignation.
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