The Dnke of Devonshire, who spoke at Leeds, also on
Wednesday, took the same general line. He suggested, for the comfort of Lord Rosebery and his colleagues, that the defeat of Lord Rosebery's Government might not have been chiefly due to bad leadership on their part, but to the efforts of the Unionist party, which had greatly improved its organisation during the three years of the Liberal Govern- ment. He gave great credit to Lord Rosebery for following up the policy of the previous Government, and for his patriotic support of the efforts of the present Government on all questions of foreign affairs; but, as far as he could judge, Lord Rosebery's suggestion that the present Govern- ment "could not resist the temptation " of reversing the Chitral policy of the late Government, was entirely mis- taken, since it had not even received the support of Sir Henry Fowler, the Indian Secretary of the late Govern- ment, who had not asked for a censure of the new Indian policy, but had reserved his judgment, and admitted that the question of retaining Chitral could afford to wait. The Duke further said that the Unionist Cabinet had deliberately resolved not to raise needlessly, purely political controversies, but to apply its whole force to the alleviation of the widely prevalent distress of the squires, farmers, and rural labourers.
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