WS OF THE WEEK.
THE event of the week which overshadows all others at home is the admission made on Wednesday by Sir Rufus Isaacs in the course of the action against Le _Malin, that in April last year he bought 10,000 shares (nominally £5 each) in the American Marconi Company and sold 1,000 of them to Mr. Lloyd George and 1,000 to the Master of Elibank, then Chief Liberal Whip. We have dealt at length elsewhere with this extraordinary transaction and with the allegation that the purchases were not only not corrupt but perfectly legitimate. We will here only ask one question of Sir Rufus Isaacs and Mr. Lloyd George. It is this. Suppose that before the transaction had taken place they had gone to the Prime Minister and had asked him -whether he thought they might properly act as, in fact, they did act. Can they honestly say that they are sure he would have told them that there was no sort of objection to the course they proposed to take, and that they might offer the whole Cabinet shares if they liked P We are not in a position to interpret Mr. Asquith's mind, but we know him to be a man of the highest honour and specially scrupulous in all matters concerning money, a man on whom no breath of suspicion in things pecuniary has ever fallen. He will, of course, act chivalrously towards his friends under fire, but we should be surprised indeed to hear that he had bought American Marconis and endorsed the action of the Attorney-General and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The thing is unthinkable.
