It is not necessary for us to summarise the speeches
made at the Asquith dinner on Friday week, for the function became something very like a fiasco owing to the fact that in the afternoon, and only some three or four hours before the dinner, Lord Rosebery made the important, or rather sensa- tional, speech noticed by us elsewhere. It is not for us to characterise the nature of Lord Rosebery's action towards his former colleagues and still warm friends, but unless Mr. Asquith, Sir Edward Grey, and Sir Henry Fowler are made of different stuff from the rest of mankind they can hardly have helped resenting Lord Rosebery's lack of feeling and consideration, if not actual rudeness, towards them. • Lord Rosebery, it is understood, refused to be present at the dinner, but he did not refuse an opportunity to take the wind completely out of his friends' sails. Lord Rosebery's speech, besides his announcement as to the lone furrow in which he would not perhaps be entirely alone after all—the indications as yet point to Lord Heneage, and to Lord Heneage only, as a possible joint occupant of Lord Rosebery's furrow—contained little of political importance, but he showed a good deal of irritation, if not irascibility, in repeating his previous statement that the Liberal party could not contain both Imperialists and Pro-Boers. The dinner speeches, on the other hand, though full of a manly indepen- dence in regard to the war, made no attempt to shatter the Liberal party. As far as we can judge, the whole of the exciting events connected with the Liberal party during the last three weeks have resulted in nothing. Things are just as they were.
