THE VERDICT. IN " ISAACS VERSUS HOBHOUSE " AND ITS
LESSONS. THE Marconi Libel Case ended (July 25th) in a verdict for the defendant, Sir Charles Hobhouse. Counsel on both sides admitted that the issue was " which of two men, Sir Charles Hobhouse and Mr. Godfrey Isaacs, was telling the truth," and the jury decided that the false statements were made by Mr. Isaacs. But as was pointed out again and again in the course of the trial, this could be no case of unconscious falsehood, or self-deception. Whichever man was lying was doing so consciously, deliberately, and maliciously, and in order to produce the moral ruin of his opponent. No one who followed the evidence with an open mind can doubt that the verdict was fully justified.
In our opinion, the case is so bad that it should under normal conditions be followed up by action on the part of the Public Prosecutor. Perjury is a crime which ought to have its reward. Remembering, however, the history of the Marconi controversies, we are obliged to admit that a trial in which Mr. Godfrey Isaacs might be induced to make all sorts of revelations, or alleged revelations, as to public men might have results highly injurious to the national interest. As a rule we are all for washing dirty linen, and washing it in public if necessary ; but this is a time when nothing must be done to shake confidence in the authority of )(misters or high officials. But though holding the opinion we have just expressed, we think that a word can safely be said, and ought to be said, in support of the principle that in all that concerns the conduct of our public men it is essential to maintain the very highest standard ; and that if a low standard, or a loose, casual, or indifferent standard, is adopted the most unfortunate consequences may follow. It may be remembered that during the controversies over the grant of the Post Office Contract to the Marconi Company those who were opposed to the way in which the whole matter was being handled declared that, even admitted that the Post Office must grant their monopoly rights to a Company, it was essential that the Company should be one controlled by men of the highest standing and position in the City, that Mr. Godfrey Isaacs did not satisfy this condition, that the fact that he was the brother of the Attorney-General was not a happy but an unhappy accident, and generally that lack of prudence and devotion to the highest ideals of State action was being shown.
The unfortunate consequences which were foretold by those who took up that attitude soon became apparent. When Mr. Godfrey Isaacs went to America to found the American Marconi Company, en liaison with the British Company, the Attorney-General (a member of the Cabinet and the chief legal adviser of the Government) telegraphed his good wishes to be read at a dinner in New York celebrating the foundation of the new Company.
Other unfortunate events followed thick and fast. There was the Parliamentary debate in which Ministers who had Marconi investments assured the House of Commons with passionate emphasis that they did not hold Marconi shares. It appeared later that what they had in their minds was British Marconi shares only, and that they had not thought it necessary to disclose their possession of and speculations in American Marconis, or to explain to the House the differ- ences between the two Companies. Next came the inquiry of the Select Committee, and the very unfortunate manner in which it was conducted by a series of majority votes directed to protect Ministers and to limit the inquiry. Then followed the still more unfortunate disclosures in the Ministers' libel action against a French newspaper for its comments- and news, and the amazing circumstance that men who had insisted upon Mr. Chamberlain observing the Caesarian standard in regard to his investments did not think that the use of that argument ought to have made them specially careful and open in regard to their own invest- ments. But of these things we will say no more, and will not even deal with that appallingly unfortunate incident, the whitewashing Marconi debate in the House of Commons. We must, however, note that the public embarrassment, not to say public humiliation, caused by the fact that it would be undesirable to prosecute Mr. Godfrey Isaacs for perjury is the last, and one of the worst, of the unfortunate consequences of having adopted a low standard.
Think of its astounding involutions and convolutions. Sir Charles Hobhouse is an honourable man, and we all owe him a debt of gratitude for defending his good fame in a Court of Law and not sheltering himself behind Parlia- mentary privilege, as for example did another Minister who libelled the Spectator in the House of Commons. Yet when the Marconi Contract was before Parliament Sir Charles supported it with his vote and influence, remained in the Cabinet which whitewashed the Marconi Ministers, and generally did nothing to support the high standard of conduct against the low I Consider again the case of the chief Radical newspapers—the Daily News, the Star, the Daily Chronicle, the Westminster Gazette. They have taken sides with Sir Charles Hobhouse just now and against the representative of the Marconi Company. Yet before and after the " revelations " those papers denounced all who criticized the Marconi dealings of Ministers as political bravos and assassins who were out to use poisoned weapons against Liberal leaders, not because of any action really unbecoming, but because those Liberal leaders had incurred the undying hatred o f the wealthy and luxurious classes, &a., &c. The whole Marconi business is a subject for the keenest regret, and above all because even now we cannot finally clear it up by a full, frank, and free admission of our follies and worse. It has been a sordid business from beginning to end.
Are we going to make it a lesson and a warning, and a proof that we must maintain the high standard ? We sin- cerely trust so, but the light-hearted manner in which people have tended to adopt the low standard in a recent episode points, we fear, the other way. On such indications, how- ever, there had better be silence for the present. While the guns are firing it is specially necessary to remember Burke's maxim : " I must bear with inconveniences till they fester into crimes."
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