14 JANUARY 1911, Page 2

Letters from Sir West Ridgeway and Sir Harry Poland having

assumed that the Home Secretary had "taken the charge of the operations out of the hands of the executive officers," Mr. Winston Churchill in Thursday's Times gives a complete denial to those charges. He did not hear of the disorders until half-an-hour after the Scots Guards had reached the spot and begun to fire; he did not send for, nor was he consulted as to the sending for, the Artillery or Engineers. He did not interfere in any way with the dispositions made by the police authorities on the spot, and "from beginning to end the police had an absolutely free hand."' This statement, which is complete in itself, is fully borne out by the interest- ing account of the affray by an eyewitness which we pablkih in our correspondence columns.