Nothing, as a rule, is more useless than inter-journalistic polemics.
We must, however, protest against the unworthy sneers of the Saturday Review at the new leader of the Unionist Party. It was quite right to oppose his leadership or to treat it with frigid equanimity if it disbelieved in his capacity. The taste of such a passage as the following is, however, execrable :-
" His defect is that he is not rooted in the Conservative tradi- tion, does not touch the Tory imagination. He is not of the land, not of the grand old ruling class; not a Churchman. One cannot connect him with the public school system, the University system, the Services. Is this why the Government party cheered him so warmly ? "
The first part of the extract is snobbishness of the very worst and most foolish kind, and may well make any man of good family, or any public school or university man, blush for this ill-conditioned attempt to exalt a narrow social privilege.
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