As Sir Alexander King's way of meeting one charge by
answering another, and a totally different one, seems likely to spread, we will repeat once more that we have never charged, or intended to charge, any member of the Government or any of its servants directly or indirectly with corruption or any such offence in connexion with the Marconi contract. Indeed, we have been most scurrilously abused by the Eye- witness for our refusal to make such charges. It was there insinuated that we have been trying to shelter the Government. What we have done is to assert that the Government have not in this matter acted with the delicacy, the discretion, and the carefulness of public interests with which they ought to have acted. Through this careless- ness two things have happened. The Government have made, as far as we can judge from the evidence, a bad bargain with the Marconi Company—though we do not profess to speak from any expert knowledge, but rather from the admissions of the Government witnesses. Next, and this is by far the more important matter, the Government have, by their want of delicacy and discretion in handling the whole matter, allowed an atmosphere of suspicion and of poisonous, and as we believe quite untrue, innuendoes to be created which is most injurious to the public interest. This is our contention—a contentiou which it was, in our belief, a public duty to set forth. From it we shall not be driven by threats or by accusations that we are making attacks which we are not making, or by artful attempts to confound our reasonable protests with the unreason- able and scurrilous accusations which we repudiate and deplore as much as can Mr. Samuel or Sir Rufus Isaacs.
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