In the House of Lords on Wednesday Lord Lansdowne .
administered a powerful and thoroughly well-deserved rebuff to Lord Portsmouth for asking questions which it is amazing that a man of his official experience could have thought it wise or patriotic to put forward. Lord Lansdowne told Lord Ports- mouth plainly that he was trying to get out of the Government information which they had made it quite clear they thought it necessary in the public interest to withhold. Wo shall not endorse Lord Portsmouth's indiscretion by quoting his ques- tions, but will give Lord Lansdowne's answer :-
" I will answer in a few words the three questions. As regards the first, I do not know where the noble Earl collects the kind of information he has been pouring forth during the last few minutes.... The noble Earl is apparently supplied with this information from the same sources that throughout this affair have been publishing garbled and incomplete accounts of the Agreement and everything connected with it. Tho noble Earl apparently swallows with avidity the kind of stories which are told him. . . . I am able to tell him his information is of the most suspect character, and we have excellent reasons for believing the kind of information with which he is supplied is purveyed by people who are by no means friends of this country.'!
