That the intentions of the editors of the Times and
Daily Mail and of their proprietor, Lord Northcliffe, were patriotio we do not of course deny ; but in our opinion they did not show that sense of responsibility and discretion which they ought to have shown, and might have reasonably been expected to show. So little sense of proportion and balance had they in their philippics, that in order to score off Ministers with whom they were quarrelling, or to impress some particular point in a home campaign, they cried " Stinking fish I " without a thought of the ulterior consequences. At the moment when it was vital for the proper prosecution of our affairs that we should convince the public opinion of the world that we not only meant to win but were in a position to win—that, in fact, our fish had never been so fresh—they filled the air with shrieks of despair. In our opinion, then, the Home Secretary and Lord Robert Cecil, both generally and by specific examples, made out a strong case to show that the articles in the Daily Mail, and in a lesser degree in the Times, had been injurious to the best interests of the nation.
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