Captain Bacon's letters—which were written three years ago— led to
a somewhat stormy scene in the House of Commons on Wednesday. Mr. McKenna made it clear that Captain Bacon had no notion when he wrote these letters that they would be printed or used in any public way, and, on behalf of Sir John Fisher, expressed regret that the passage relating to Mr. Bellairs had not been deleted. He vigorously denied that the letters had been printed because they reflected on the personal character of Mr. Bellairi. Later on the Speaker ruled that there had been no breach of privilege; the question whether the letter was libellous or not was not for him (the Speaker) but for the Law Courts to decide. Tho incident, as the Daily Chronicle observes, has left a disagreeable impression. The Manchester Guardian in a leading article notes that no satis- factory answer has been returned to the question ,whether Captain Bacon, who "wrote as he would have written had he been a confidential agent of the First Sea Lord," was instructed to send these reports on his superior officers :— "The furthest Mr. McKenna has gone is to say that a system of junior officers reporting upon their seniors would of course meet with the disapprobation of the Admiralty, but the letters in question did not constitute any such report.' We aceept the Admiralty's assurance that there is no ` system ' of espionage ; but even one special correspondent of the First Sea Lord is one too many. If he was an unauthorised correspondent, he should have been severely censured for writing 'private' letters of such a character to the First Lord ; if, on the other hand, he was authorised to write, Sir John Fisher has sinned against the laws of discipline in the Fleet as much as Lord Charles lleresford, or any of the officers who instigated a newspaper agitation against his reforms."
That is sound doctrine admirably expressed. The Manchester Guardian notes as a serious feature of the case this leakage of confidential information. But what can you expect when yen print fifty copies when one as more than enough P The incident as a whole can only be described as deplorable.
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