THE MARCONI CONTRACT.
DURING the General Election of 1900 some grossly unfair attacks were made upon Mr. Chamberlain, his brother, and his sons in regard to their connexion with companies doing Government business, and also as regards certain investments, and in those attacks the Liberal press joined in varying degrees of acrimony. To these accusations Mr. Chamberlain, who was then Colonial Secretary, and Mr. Austen Chamberlain, who was Civil Lord of the Admiralty, replied by an absolute denial. They declared, in a way which carried entire conviction to all sane and decent persons, that they had never made a penny out of Government contracts, or in the slightest way used their public positions to benefit themselves or any member of the Chamberlain family. For ourselves we not only accepted that denial, but anticipated it, and expressed our sense of certainty that there had never been the shadow of any damage to the public interest. We knew that the persons named were above all suspicion. At the same time, however, we pointed out that we could not admit that the absolute bona fides of Mr. Chamberlain and his family exhausted the matter.
"They are not the only people in the world, and some day we may have Ministers and their sons in whom the public will not be able to feel the same confidence. But there cannot be two rules of conduct in the public service. It is necessary, therefore, that the men and the families in whom we have confidence shall set an example which must be followed by others in time to come—men on whom possibly such absolute reliance cannot be placed."
We went on to plead for a keen and vigilant public opinion in all matters where there was a possibility of suspicion. In dealing with the matter on another occasion we pointed out that it was no answer to say that in a particular case no public disadvantage had resulted.
"In all such matters it is essential that there should not merely be nothing wrong, but no suspicion of anything wrong. Democracies, more than all other forms of government, are apt to have their minds clouded by suspicion, and such clouding is a great public evil. There is nothing which gives the demagogue a better foothold for his evil work than suspicion, and therefore it is desirable to create an atmosphere in public life in which it shall be most difficult for suspicion to arise."
Next, dealing with the question of Cabinet Ministers who have brothers in business, we used the following words :— "No one would, of course, be so foolish as to suggest that the brothers of a man who had reached Cabinet rank must instantly retire from business for fear of compromising their kinsman. Again, it would be preposterous to expect a statesman to leave public life because he could not induce his brothers to cease directing companies which were in the habit of tendering for Government contracts. We make no such quixotic proposal as that. In amplification of what we said last week, we would point out that what we want is the creation of a vigorous and vigilant public opinion in regard to the whole question."
Finally we insisted that it was no use for Ministers when they were innocent of any sinister intent to beat their breasts in public, and appeal to the country to trust them all in all or not at all. The world, we declared, cannot be run on the dilemma " Either I am trustworthy or I am not, but if I am worthy of trust then it is shameful and malignant not to trust me all in all." Personal innocence, however complete, does not cover the whole ground. It was very disagreeable for us as a Unionist news- paper which bad warmly supported Mr. Chamberlain to write in this way, especially when he was being attacked in so base and so unfair a style by his political opponents in the Liberal press, and so obviously for party reasons. We felt, however, that disagreeable as the position was, we were bound to face it or else to abandon what has always seemed to us to be the most honourable as well as the most useful function of the journalist, whatever his party, namely, that of being the watch-dog of the State. Professor Jowett once said, as regards our profession, that he would " rather sweep the streets than be a journalist." That was a very unjust and ill-considered view, but who can deny that it would be a true view if the journalist, because of party ties, is not to speak out when some point of moral principle in public life is involved ? We further felt that it was specially incumbent upon a Unionist paper to take the line we did, because when it was taken by Liberal papers it was necessarily discounted as due to political spite and animus.
A very similar situation has now arisen in regard to the Marconi contracts. All sorts of accusations, many of them of an extremely libellous character, have been made in regard to the Postmaster-General, the Attorney-General, and the Attorney-General's brother. That these accusa- tions are as untrue as were the accusations in regard to Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, and Mr. Chamberlain's brother we do not doubt for a moment. We are perfectly willing to accept, and do accept, the indignant denials made by Mr. Samuel and Sir Rufus Isaacs in the House of Commons last Friday week. We must point out, however, as we pointed. out in the case of Mr. Chamberlain, that these denials, though true, do not by any means exhaust the matter, and that if the situation is looked at carefully it must be admitted that there has been very great carelessness on the part of Cabinet Ministers. The carelessness is, indeed, a good deal worse than in the case of Mr. Chamberlain, because with him there was in fact no possibility of pecuniary gain. All that one could say was that a bad example had been set and a bad precedent established, and that an injury had been done to our public life. In the present case the tremendous rise in Marconi shares and the suspicions which were sure to arise out of that fact made vigilance on the part of members of the Government to avoid suspicion doubly, nay, a thousand. times, more imperative. But though we feel bound to speak thus of the whole transaction and to censure the action of Ministers, we freely admit that the Spectator, as a Unionist organ, is not the paper which is in the best position to pronounce such censure or to take the line of action which we took in the case of Mr. Chamberlain. We fully admit that we are politically too strongly opposed to Mr. Samuel, Sir Rufus Isaacs, and the Government as a whole to take a dispassionately judicial view of the matter. In any case our view will be discounted. by the public when we are dealing with Liberal Ministers. It is from a Liberal newspaper that the censure and the reproof for carelessness in a matter of vital public interest should. come. In these circumstances we fully expected that the kind of action we took in 1900 would be taken by papers of such high standing as the Westminster Gazette and the Manchester Guardian. To our astonish- ment, however, these papers, while repudiating all belief in the libellous charges, have not said anything in condemna- tion of ministerial action. On the contrary, they have simply blown the brazen trumpet of party panegyric over Mr. Samuel and Sir Rufus Isaacs. There is not a hint that the conduct and management of the Marconi contract has not been absolutely satisfactory, sound, and prudent from beginning to end. Both these papers write as if the whole matter were exhausted by Ministers declaring that they had not corruptly made money out of the Marconi business. No responsible person, of course, ever thought they did, but there is not a word of censure for those who, by their action, created. the atmosphere of suspicion in which the disgusting and, as we believe, absolutely untrue libels of the Eyewitness have flourished. Of the general tone of the Manchester Guardian article of last Saturday we can only say that it is utterly unworthy of the traditions of that paper. No one can read it without feeling that the paper had determined to stand by its political friends at all costs, and to insist not only that they could do no wrong, but that any one who dared to suggest anything to the contrary must be shouted down and suppressed for having dared to put forth his hand against the Ark of the Covenant.
The whole question of the Marconi contracts and the con- nexion of Ministers therewith is to be fully investigated by a House of Commons Committee. That being so, the persons chiefly concerned will probably say that they will not take any other action till this investigation is over. It is greatly to be hoped, however, in the public interest that when the Committee has investigated and the report has been made, matters will not be allowed to rest here, but that Sir Rufus Isaacs and Mr. Samuel will at once proceed. to bring libel actions against the Eyewitness and any other papers which can be shown to have suggested corrupt actions or corrupt motives. If the persons responsible for the publication of these articles can be proved to have no ground for their innuendoes, then most assuredly they deserve and ought to receive condign punishment in a court of law, either by exemplary damages or by fine and imprisonment. In other words though the Commons Committee will no doubt prove useful, we must not regard it as the end of the matter. The fair fame of Ministers is not a light matter, and those who asperse it must be made either to justify their conduct or else to receive the punishment which such failure deserves. The notion that such accusations as those made in the Eyewitness against two Cabinet Ministers can be passed over as unworthy of notice is quite untenable. The paper in question is very ably written and is read by people in whose mind it is most undesirable that untrue suspicions should grow up. The Eyewitness, whatever else it may have done, has not shown want of courage. It has not hedged in its attacks, and it may fairly claim that it cannot be put aside as a voice too small to be listened to. And here we may remark that, in the case of the accusa- tions brought against Mr. Chamberlain's brother in 1901, Mr. Arthur Chamberlain took the very proper course of bringing the Morning Leader and Star into court, and obtained damages from those papers. The Morning Leader and Star, instead of confining themselves to pointing out that there had been carelessness and want of vigilance in avoiding suspicion and the appearance of evil in the case of the persons named, chose to insinuate the most untrue and unjust charges against the members of an honourable family. Where they had a right to censure carelessness they imputed something very like fraud and corruption, with the very proper result that their par- tisanship was exposed in court and they suffered. in damages.
In a leader published on March 30th, 1901, which dealt with the action against the Star, we summed up the situation in the following words :— "The Morning Leader and the Star have been duly punished for their violence and exaggeration, and for making a matter which ought to have been outside and above party a subject for party malignity, and the country has been satisfied that there was nothing whatever corrupt in the relations between any members of the Chamberlain family and public contracts. This is well ; but we cannot help believing that when the dust of the present combat has subsided there will, as an outcome of the incident, be a general agreement among our statesmen to maintain the highest possible abstract standard in these matters, and not to trust blindly and without the safeguards of a rigid etiquette to the chance of individuals invariably acting with scrupulous anxiety as to the interests of the nation. Though the discussion of the matter during the last six months has shown that we are as yet quite clear from anything corrupt in public life, it has also shown how and where the dangers lie. When all is said and done it is a matter of delicacy, and such delicacy can only be successfully maintained and exacted by the creation of a healthy and vigilant public opinion such as we have endeavoured to create."
We have nothing to alter in or to add to these words as regards the present case, except to say once more that the House of Commons' investigation must be followed by actions in a court of law.
Previous page
