Political meetings are never dull when Lord Charles Beresford is
on the platform. Speaking at Rochester on Wednesday, he indulged in some frank criticisms of the Liberal party and its leaders. Of Lord Rose bery he observed that he "possessed every qualification that was necessary for a leader barring one,—that he could not lead," and went on to say that a nominal leader was Sir Henry Campbell- Bannerman, who appeared now to have a species of what he might call political hydrophobia. He would bite anything or anybody, and find fault with anything or anybody. "At the present moment he was in a very curious position, be- cause for some time he had been sitting on a wall—a very rickety wall—and he was not at all clear on which side he was going to climb down. It seemed to him that Campbell had gone on one side and Bannerman on the other. But on both sides there happened to be a very bad ditch, and Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman had fallen into it." His utterances on the question had been contradictory, and "he had jammed all the opinions of the different sections of his party into his head."
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