TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. SMILLIE AND MR. LANSBURY—WILL THEY CLEAR THEIR CHARACTERS ?
THERE is a very sound maxim of law that those who come to the Courts for help must come with clean hands. The same principle applies to those who come before the Court of British public opinion. If they want to succeed they must come with clean hands. They must clear their characters.
We are on the very edge of a great struggle over what is nominally a claim of the miners to higher wages. In truth, it is a claim on the part of the Extremists of the Labour world to usurp the power and authority of the Government, and to do so not through the support of the majority of the British People, but by the aid of money and support obtained from a foreign and intensely hostile Government—a Government which derides, despises and condemns the majority of British workmen as selfish aristocrats ! In this coming battle as to whether we are to be ruled by a section of the manual labourers or by the will of the majority, the battle-ground being the nation's supply of coal, two figures emerge as leaders : one is Mr. Smillie, the Miner's chief, the other Mr. Lansbury, the editor and controller of the forces of the Daily Herald. They are the men who, whether for good or evil, are engineering the strike. If the miners win, the victory will be Mr. Smillie's and Mr. Lansbury's. If they are beaten, the failure must inevitably be laid at their doors. For the moment we do not wish to say more than what we have said already with regard to the merits of the case. What we want to-day is to express our strong belief that these two men are not going to win unless they clear their political characters from the very grave suspicion which has fallen upon them. Only a few weeks ago Mr. Smillie was in the clearest and most public way accused by the Duke of Northumberland of actions and speeches which, if true, must undermine the confidence his own followers and the whole British nation ought to have in him as a poli- tician and a man. Whether the accusations thus made by the Duke of Northumberland, and published in the Morning Post, were true in substance and in fact we do not propose to determine or to discuss. We can, however, say without the slightest fear of contradiction that if the charges made by the Duke of Northumberland were not true they were highly libellous. These charges were, in the legal phrase, calculated to bring Mr. Smillie into " hatred, ridicule, and contempt." Therefore, if untrue, they did him grievous harm and are actionable. If, then, Mr. Smillie has any concern for his political good name he must at once clear his character by bringing an action for libel against his traducer. It is idle for Mr. Smillie's defenders to say that we are taking an unfair advantage of him in trying to goad him into a libel action because we must know that the Duke of Northumberland's words were not worth bothering about—did not involve any real discredit. That plea is absurd and will not stand. The merest novice in the law would have to admit that the words, if untrue, create the legal offence of libel. It happens, however, that in this case there is no need to dispute whether they were either actionable or worth bothering about. Mr. Smillie, in the clearest possible way, himself admitted them not only to be actionable, but to be of a very serious nature. When in the House of Lords the Duke of Northumberland accused Mr. Smillie of being a dangerous member of society who was conspiring against the State, Mr. Smillie retorted that a public statement of this nature was libellous, as of course it technically was. Mr. Smillie went on to say that if the Duke would repeat his charges in public, and when unprotected by privilege, he (Mr. Smillie) would take action.
The Duke of Northumberland, who is neither a coward nor a fool, and who does not use strong language without meaning it, acted very differently from some of our high Ministers when accused of libelling individuals under the protection of Parliamentary privilege. He at once repeated his charges word for word on a public plat- form under no conditions of _privilege,• and, what - is ;more, he published them in an article in the Natiorial Review. He rubbed in his libel. He did what Juries and the Courts of saw very properly always punish with special severity when defamatory charges cannot be justified. The jury may sometimes brush aside a libel in a political speech as a part of the inflammatory rhetoric of the platform. When, however, the libeller is challenged to repeat his libel and repeats it not merely verbally but with the deliberation of writing, the responsibility of the accuser becomes doubly grave. If brought into court he is expected, nay required, to make good every word of his charge before a jury of his countrymen. If, then, there ever was a case in which a public man should be compelled by public opinion to clear his character by an action of libel it is the case of Mr. Smillie. We are not going to prejudge the case in any way, but we are bound to say that if he does not clear his character by an action for libel against the Duke of North- umberland, he will stand dishonoured before the country. In plain words, he must clear his character.
The plea that he has not the means to do this will not suffice. Mr. Smillie must know that if he were to bring an action against the Duke of Northumberland he would have no difficulty whatever in getting support from his friends and admirers which would amply cover his expenses. Further, he would, if the libel were untrue, obtain exem- plary damages from the Duke of Northumberland and all the costs he had been put to. From the point of view of a cynical lawyer, and on the assumption that the charges cannot be made good, the Duke of Northumberland has placed himself in a very dangerous position. In a libel action he would, to begin with, start with a good deal of prejudice aaainst him. Dukes in these days are not popular, and there would always be the cheap appeal that Mr. Smillie was a poor man, of humble origin and self-educated, while the Duke was rich and powerful and well educated. The haughty and wealthy aristocrat would be represented to the Jury as persecuting the long- suffering toiler in the mines.
Mr. Smillie, in effect, has the cards in his favour. He must not then be surprised if failure to take action will be judged very unfavourably by the British public, and that they will conclude that the things that were said about him by the Duke are true. We fear that a good many people will regard it as a somewhat unfriendly act on our part towards the Duke of Northumberland to try to drive Mr. Smillie into a libel action against him. But we feel that the matter is one of such great importance that we have no other course open. No one can rightly suggest that the Duke should be protected from an error so serious, nay so cruel, if he has made one. It is essential that we should have the truth of the matter tested in a Court of Law. The possibility of the Duke's getting an adverse verdict, even if he meant well, ought not to be taken into consideration.
Our readers will no doubt remember also that we are taking no new standpoint in saying that Mr. Smillie must oblige the Duke of Northumberland to substantiate his accusations. Again and again we have asserted in these columns that public men cannot ride off on the excuse that they are too great and good to take notice of libels against their characters. They are trustees of public interests and must clear their characters from unjust aspersions. They can safely rely on our Judges and Juries being scrupulously fair and unprejudiced in the matter of libel actions. If they are prejudiced at all, it is against the persons accused of libel, and especially of libels in the public Press. Mr. Smillie would have an abso- lutely fair trial. Evidently he must have thought so him- self. Otherwise he would not have dared the Duke of Northumberland to repeat his accusations where they were not protected by privilege.
Mr. Lansbury is not nearly so sombre or so powerful a person as Mr. Smillie. Indeed, from many points of view Mr. Lansbury may be described as the Lion Comique of politics. Yet, notwithstanding this, he, like Mr. Smillie, stands in imminent need of clearing his character, though not from any hostile accuser like the Duke of Northumber- land, but from the wireless whispers of his friends and admirers in Moscow. The publication of the telegrams which passed between Tchitcherin, the Foreign Secretary of the Soviet, and Litvinoff, their- agent in Stockholm, assert in so many words that Mr. Lansbury's paper, the Daily Herald, has received a subsidy from the Government of Lenin and Trotsky. In a message of February 23rd Tchitcherin says :— " Lansbury does not wish to depend on us financially, but wishes that purely commercial relations should be established between us ; he therefore wishes to pay us a small sum as commission for the credit we are obtaining for him for purchasing paper in Sweden or Finland."
Mr. Lansbury will tell us perhaps that he has already entirely cleared his character from the suspicion created by these wireless telegrams by his announcement in the Daily Herald that he has received " not a bond, not a franc, not a rouble " from Russia. So clear and direct an announcement as this no doubt at first reassured Mr. Lansbury's friends and supporters, and even a large part of the public. They felt that a man must be innocent from all dependence upon Russia when he spoke out like that. Unfor- tunately for Mr. Lansbury, he did not content himself with a simple, unvarnished denial. He went into details and gave a lengthy account of the financial position of the Daily Herald. This financial statement was his undoing. It is analysed in a most significant article in Saturday's Morning Post.
Mr. Lansbury, it is noted, first said that the messages were fabricated ; secondly, that they were eavesdroppings of private conversations ; then he dropped the fabrication theory, and finally got on to the highly technical plea that what other people said about him was not evidence. The writer in the Morning Post proceeds to analyse with surprising results the statement made as to the amounts of money expended by the Daily Herald upon paper. Mr. Lansbury appears to declare that he has purchased since December 4th last a total of 7,253 tons of paper. That at current prices must have cost him, " if he paid for it," as the writer in the Morning Post puts it, £406,168. Out of this huge amount no fewer than 5,400 tons (valued at £302,400) came from Sweden. All this paper surely must have been paid for by Mr. Lansbury or else given him on credit. If the paper was paid for, where did the money come from ? Mr. Lansbury's account of the money the Daily Herald has at its disposal shows quite inadequate sums. The total amount of the first debentures is £67,733, while the second debentures amount to £13,600. [Here we may mention that among the second debenture holders are Zaghlul Pasha, the Egyptian Separatist ; Major Graham Pole, of the Indian Home Rule Movement ; and Mr. Francis Meynell.] Obviously these sums are not adequate for the purchase of the vast quantity of paper obtained. But perhaps it will be said that Mr. Lansbury paid for the paper as he went along, and out of the great daily revenue received by the Daily Herald. It is notorious that the paper has a very large circulation. In other words, the circulation each day paid for the paper on which the Daily Herald was printed. Therefore there was no need either for ready money or credit. Unfortunately, this plea will not do, for Mr. Lansbury himself said not long ago that his paper was steadily losing £1,000 a week ! The wireless telegrams place the matter even in a more unfavourable light. For example, in the message from Tchitcherin to Litvinofi of February 11th, Tchitcherin used the following words : "His (Mr. Lansbury's) losses now amount to £1,000 a week, but will be greatly increased." We want to be perfectly fair to Mr. Lansbury, but it does not appear to us to be unjust or prejudiced to say that since he clearly had not the money in hand to pay for the paper he must have got it by credit. He must, that is, either have obtained it from his bank or from the paper manufacturers. There is no third way that we can think of, provided the Soviet is ruled out. But if the money had been borrowed from the bank, Mr. Lansbury would no doubt have mentioned the fact, for it would have been in his favour. It would have helped to prove his vehement protest that he was not getting a subsidy in cash or in kind from the Russian Soviet.
Therefore we are driven to the conclusion that he did get the paper on credit and apparently from a Scandi- navian company. But it is notorious that paper-makers are not philanthropists and do not, though for never so noble a cause, give away paper gratis. They would cer- tainly want from a foreign newspaper either cash down or guarantees from powerful people which would be as good as cash. In view of this fact, we are driven back on the statement of the wireless telegrams which point to a credit provided by the Soviet. But if this is the explanation, then when Mr. Lansbury says . he has had " not a bond, not a franc, not a rouble " from his Russian friends, he is drawing a fine distinction between money and money's worth. He reminds us, in fact, of the indignant fiancé who, when asked by the lady's father whether he was in debt, replied that he did not owe six- pence. When further pressed, he exclaimed, " I have not a debt in the world ! Only yesterday I borrowed the money to pay off every single debt." Mr. Lansbury's financial explanations are distmctly of this character. However, there may be some other explanation of which we have not thought. Therefore we join most heartily with the writer of the article in the Morning Post in sug- gesting that Mr. Lansbury ought to make some further statement as to the manner in which he got the £400,000 clearly needed for the paper that he states he has purchased. If Mr. Lansbury does not clear up this point he cannot expect the British public to feel any great confidence in him or his actions direct or indirect.
Cynics might very well say that we are doing a very stupid thing in urging Mr. Smillie and Mr. Lansbury to clear their political characters before the strike takes place. " If their characters remain uncleared the British people will not believe any statements that are made by them or on their behalf during the struggle. Why then bother about them ? " We are not, however, going to be a part to any such Machiavellian tactics. We want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth with regard to the Duke of Northumberland's accusations against Mr. Smillie and with regard to Mr. Lansbury's own statements. If Mr. Smillie and Mr. Lansbury are wise they will not regard this article as hostile to them, but will take it as a sound piece of advice, which will help them to obtain the justice they demand in the court of public opinion.
P.S.—Since this article was written comes the news that Mr. Watson, who was also the subject of severe criticism by the Duke of Northumberland, is bringing an action for libel against both the Duke and the Morning Post. Mr. Watson has done the right and the straight- forward thing. He evidently realizes that it is his duty, as a public man, to do his best to clear his character from dishonouring charges. His decision affords the greatest support that we could possibly obtain for the contentions set forth in our article. As the matter is now sub judice, we shall say nothing in regard to the specific allegations made against Mr. Watson, except that his action makes similar action by Mr. Smillie imperative. It should also serve as a good example for Mr. Lansbury.
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