TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GENOA RECRIMINATIONS—A NATIONAL HUMILIATION. IT is difficult to express the sense of disgust and indignation which we feel in regard to what can best be described as the Genoa recriminations. It is a matter in which four parties are involved—the Prime Minister, Lord Northcliffe and his chief organ of public opinion, the House of Commons and, in a lesser degree, the House of Lords. Between them the dishonours are " easy." The Times cannot possibly be excused for making the situation at Genoa, bad before, infinitely worse by its methods of criticism and disclosure. Whether those disclosures are true or the reverse we do not intend to discuss. We have not the means at our command to ascertain the facts, nor, again, any mandate to assume the judicial function, though we feel very strongly that the facts should be carefully and impartially investigated, and that a definite pronouncement should be made either directly by those whose business it is to regard the interests of the country as their supreme care—that is, Parliament —or by persons deputed by them. We admit that the task of a newspaper, the primary function of which is to act as the watch-dog to the com- munity, is exceedingly difficult when things are managed with the astonishing levity and irritable recklessness with which the Genoa Conference has been managed by Mr. Lloyd George. But, though the task of the Times was difficult, that circumstance affords no adequate excuse for a similar recklessness and levity of conduct. In home politics hard hitting and the ruthless exposure of a Minister's mishandling of affairs, however exalted his position, may not only be excused but may be a positive duty. But when our position in face of the whole world is involved, and when matters of so tremendous an import as those which concern our relations with our nearest Continental neighbour are concerned, reticence and discretion and the observance of journalistic methods calculated to conceal rather than expose the defects of our statesmen are essential. It matters nothing in this context, very possibly in no context, what may be the merits of the personal quarrel between Lord Northcliffe and Mr. Lloyd George. They dwindle into infinitesimal insignificance before the interests of the country.
But if Lord Northcliffe's action, or to be precise the action of his representative, has been ill-judged, what are we to say of Mr. Lloyd George ? Surely the tremendous position which he now holds, not only in the United Kingdom but in Europe as a whole, his lifelong experience of public affairs, his sixteen continuous years of great office, and finally the confidence reposed in him by his colleagues, by a majority of the House of Commons and by a very large portion of the British people, give us the right to expect from him reticence in word and action and dignity of conduct even under attacks which we admit must be exasperating in a high degree, and must, if judged from his point of view, seem monstrously unfair. The Prime Minister is no cynic, and he no doubt holds quite sincerely that fie is doing his duty and making great personal sacrifices in doing it. Therefore it is intensely bitter for him to be attacked at a moment of supreme difficulty. " When I have got my back to the wall, as I have at this moment, even my enemies should spare me." That is no doubt what he says to himself.
But though that may call forth our sympathy it does not give Mr. Lloyd George the right to lose the coolness of a statesman and behave in the kind of spirit which we all know and are amused by when it is used by a prominent member of some petty Town Council or Local Board who is attacked by the local newspaper. Given conditions of rural or minor municipal rancour there is no great harm done when heady accusations of lying and misrepre- sentation and the suggestion of all sorts of base motives fly about like leaves in the autumn. There are conditions under which one expects to hear those liberties of language that, alas ! were used on Monday night in the House of Commons. When Mr. Alderman Smith says that the statement in the Little Pedlington Eagle is " a deliberate and malicious invention," and asks His Worship the Mayor to contradict it at once, we are amused, but not surprised. When the Leader of the House of Commons, a man of the highest personal honour, who where his personal actions are concerned maintains to the full the very best and highest traditions of our public life, rises in the House of Commons and states that he is asked by the Prime Minister to say that " the account in the Times " (the precise nature of which he appar- ently does not know) is " a deliberate and malicious invention," and that the Lord Chancellor has already repudiated it, whatever " it " may be, one is filled with a sense of deep humiliation. It is no use to say, " What else could the Prime Minister do but deny that he used the provocative, ill-judged, and deeply injurious language attributed to him ? " From Mr. Lloyd George's point of view, and for the moment we consider no other, there- was no occasion to fly tooth and nail at Lord Northcliffe's paper and so at Lord Northcliffe himself. He might perfectly well have done what under similar conditions would have been done by every other Prime Minister that we can think of in the course of the last two hundred years. Through Mr. Cham- berlain he might coolly and with dignity have asked Parliament and the country to believe that he was incap- able of using the words which he was alleged to have used. He might have added that he did not propose to say any- thing that would give any opportunity whatever for further recriminations—recriminations which might have serious consequences upon what was his prime duty and also his ardent personal desire, the maintenance of good feeling between France and Britain. If he had said that and no more his words would probably have put an end at once to the mischievous gossip. At any rate, it would have prevented, what is always the worst and greatest danger in quarrels of this kind, the secondary and confirma- tory crop of statements and denials—statements which end in one disputant giving the lie direct to the other. That is what is happening just now owing to Mr. Lloyd George's inability to keep silence when his temper is ruffled. Without going into the merits of the case, we have no hesitation in saying that a Prime Minister who took a course of action which has led to so lamentable a public conflict is the author of a disaster of the first magnitude. It is incredible that Mr. Lloyd George does not see the dangers of the path he is following ! An absolute refusal to recriminate in any shape or form, explained and excused by a declaration that he would not enter into newspaper controversy under any conditions, would have been the true course.
In a word, the ordinary British citizen has a right to expect that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom will act in a spirit wholly different from that in which Mr. Lloyd George has acted.
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