Mr. Lloyd George, replying in the debate, urged that newspaper
owners, as such, ought not to be excluded from the Government. M. Clemenceau owned a paper. The most influential Italian Minister owned a paper. President Wilson had a newspaper proprietor in his Cabinet. Mr. Lloyd George pronounced a long panegyric on Lord Northcliffe and on Lord Beaverbrook as ideal propagandists. He agreed that Ministers and their associates ought not to inspire attacks upon great officials or small officials. As for honouring the men who made the attacks, Lord Northcliffe was now undertaking a task which had been discharged before by a clerk in the Foreign Office. The Prime Minister could not accept Mr. Chamberlain's theory that the House of Commons had lost authority. " If the Press has increased its power in recent years, during the war, it Is very largely because the platform is not occupied." Mr. Gladstone once said that when there was a stand-up fight between the Press and the Platform, the Platform generally won.
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