After Lord Crewe had announced on behalf of the Govern-
ment that they would not offer any objection of any kind to the setting up of the proposed Committee, he did his hest to defend the action of Lord Murray. We can only say that the defence leaves us absolutely cold. As we pointed out during the debate in the Commons, there is one, and only one, form of defence by Cabinet Ministers of their colleagues which would impress the country. If Lord Crewe, Lord Haldane, Lord Morley, and the other Cabinet Ministers in the Home of Lords, had declared that in similar circumstances they would have acted exactly as the incriminated Ministers acted, such a statement would have carried enormous weight. But neither Lord Crewe nor any of his colleagues said this or anything approaching it, any more than did men of the stamp of Mr. Aaquith and Sir Edward Grey in the Commons. They did not say it because, as everyone knows, they could not ray it—because they are utterly incapable of any transactions of the Marconi type. We can no more imagine Lord Crewe doing what the Lord Chief Justice did, or what the Chan- cellor of the Exchequer did, or what Lord Murray did, than we can imagine Lord Lansdowne doing it—we cannot suggest s, better test.
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