THE " STAR " ON MR. BALFOUR.
[To THE EDITOR 07 THE " SFECTATOR."]
Sin,—On June 20th the Star contained a leader upon the Marconi division of the night before. It began by stating that if Mr. Balfour had been leading the Opposition his speech would, in the writer's opinion, have lifted the House out of the Marconi atmosphere and averted a party division. A few lines further down is the following : " The difference between Mr. Balfour and Mr. Bonar Law is the difference
between a big man and a little man, between a great gentle- man and a party back." This sent me to my scrap-book, for I remembered that a former Star leader on Mr. Balfour had struck me as being such a remarkable specimen of Radical
journalism that I had deemed it worthy of preservation. The leader in question appeared on December 3rd, 1910, the first day of the General Election. It is beaded " To the Men of
London," and I set out below a few extracts from what the Star then said of the "big man" and " great gentleman" of its later utterance:— "Let your wrath consume him to-day. In this great country there is none so poor as to do him reverence. Why ? Because he is not an honest politician. He is a trickster, a deceiver, a cheat, a hypocrite. . . . Arthur Balfour, the man who cannot bind himself and whom nobody can bind, the man without political honour, the man without respect for his own political oath. Men of London, take him to-day and destroy him for ever. In our annals there has never been a more treacherous politician. His career is studded with betrayals. . . . But the meanest betrayal of all is the betrayal of Joseph Chamberlain. Is there anybody or anything left to sell? If there be, Arthur Balfour would sell it to get a handful of votes."
Stuff of this kind is a matter for pity rather than for amuse- ment—pity for the writer who thus degrades himself, and pity for the readers, if any such there be, who buy the Star for political guidance. But coupled with the later references to Mr. Balfour quoted above, is it not enough to make a cat
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