One of the most unfortunate*features of the General Election from
the wider national point of view has been the dead-set made against Mr. Chamberlain, and the monstrously unfair attempts to represent him as the evil genius of the present Government. This procedure has tended to deprive the electors of all sense of perspective in the fight, and to make Mr. Chamberlain appear as a party bugbear, not a statesman to be criticised and defended on his merits. The result of these grossly exaggerated and grossly unjust attacks upon a Minister who, whatever his faults, has been a faithful and zealous public servant, has been to make sane and sober discussion of his actions practically impossible. We, for example, think him open to criticism on several points, but when
he is being slandered as if he were a pickpocket, men with any sense of justice or any feeling for the decencies of public life can only be silent. At present Mr: Chamberlain cannot be criticised, even as regards matters where he has acted unwisely, because of the partisan malignity with which he has been assailed. That is the inevitable result of the apirit of detraction gone mad which possesses a portion of the Opposition. As "A. J. C." says in verse in another column, th‘SrtearSe section of the Opposition seem determined to subordinate every interest, national and Imperial, to the one ignoble object of "giving Joe a fall." We may note, how- ever, to their honour, that the Liberal leaders, even though so strongly opposed to Mr. Chamberlain as, for example, Sir William Harcourt, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Sir Edward Grey, and Mr. Asquith and Mr. Morley, have abso- lutely refused to make any reference to, or to encourage, the baser sort of attacks made against Mr. Chamberlain's personal honour.
