11 OCTOBER 1913, Page 3

We are delighted to see from a quotation in the

Daily Mail of Monday that Lord St. Aldwyn, in a letter to the Tewkes- bury Record, has shown, as, of course, we knew he would have no difficulty in showing, how grossly unjust is the suggestion now often made by Liberal writers and speakers that the sale of his property to the War Office when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1899 affords a precedent and an excuse for the Stock Exchange transactions in American Marconis of Lord Murray, the Attorney-General, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. What Lord St. Aldwyn did was in fact exactly what an honourable, high-minded man would have done, nay, must have done, in similar circum- stances. The War Office, for military reasons, and no one can doubt very good reasons, determined to purchase a portion of Salisbury Plain which belonged to the then Chancellor of the Exchequer. That property was an old family estate on which he resided and which he did not wish to sell.