5 JULY 1913, Page 10

Lest the orgy of self-righteousness, vituperation, hypocrisy, and cant at

the National Liberal Club should have been incomplete, Mr. Churchill rose at the end as a sort of irascible " heavy father " with the conventional " Bless you, my children"—" our trusted friends and colleagues who have been vilely and damnably illtreated in our cause and for our sake." The end of Mr. Churchill's speech was a glowing tribute to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, conceived with a laboured pomp of words which made it positively oppres- sive. We miss in it, however, one sentence—a sentence which we have missed from all the panegyrics that have been heaped upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Attorney-General. Their colleagues have one and all refused to say that in similar circumstances, and granted that they wished to make an investment, they would have acted exactly as the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Attorney-General acted, and still have had clear consciences. Till the colleagues in the Cabinet of the two Ministers are ready to come forward and use words of this kind, their carefully guarded certificates of character will not impress the nation.