"MARCONTS" AND THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14787, 9 June 1913, Page 6

"MARCONTS" AND THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT.

The latest telegrams concerning the connection oP British Cabinet Ministers wilh tho American Marconi Company aro of evil omen for tho Radicals. The committeo which is investigating tho matter is expected to present a report whitewashing Sir Rufus Isaacs and Mr Lloyd George, but thero is a vast difference between whitewashing by a party majority and acquittal by the public. The best Unionist newspapers have never gone beyond insistence upon the following simplo points:—That it was indelicate, indiscreet, and of bad example for tho Ministers named, and the then Liberal Whip, Viscount Elibank, to traffic at all in Marconi shares while a Post Offico contract with

tho Marconi Company was pending; that Sir Rufus Isaacs was moro than indiscreet in misleading the public last into tho belief that he had never owned a sharo in any Marconi company; that Mr Lloyd Georgo directly violated the principles which, in 1900, he insisted could not bo violated by an honest Minister; and, finally, that the Government Party was greatly offending against public morality in sotting its party need's above all other considerations. But bit by bit somo extraordinary facts have been dragged into the light. First thero was , Sir Rufus Isaacs's confession as to his dealings in American Marconis, and now there is evidence that Viscount Elibank, who was supposed merely to have received as a special friend a sharo of the Attorney-General's speculation, speculated rather largely on his own account. Tho "Spectator" cannot but reflect public opinion when it says that men aro asking what other facts aro concealed. Nobody will be surprised to learn, on the authority of "Tho Times," that the Liberals aro disturbed and angry, and that the Nationalists are afraid that tho revelations, by doing for the Government, may do for Home Rule without Ulster being called upon. The Liberals havo in recent years become "good party men," but they aro not all indifferent to anything but the Party's needs, and tho party leaders cannot resist the influence that flows up from that section of honest supporters of the Government which is shocked and ' dismayed at the revelations. It says much for the excellenco of party discipline that Mr Asquith was not long ago forced by his friends to stand and deliver in this matter. Incidentally, the affair explodes the superstition —if it is any longer widely held— that the Radical Party, "tho poor man's party," the party of poverty and righteousness and intomperato language, is really so poor, so unstained by gold and the lovo of gold, and so righteous after all. The "Saturday Review" points out that "tho Radical and Liberal Party is to-day obviously quito as much of tliis World worldly as its wicked Tory opponents, whom it is so fond of reproaching as selfish, worldly, fond of money and other possessions, and interested in new public companies and quotations on tho Stock Exchange, and so forth." There is.no objection to Radicals Being well-off, but one can properly object to their hypocrisy and unfairness. As tho "Saturday Review" observes, "there will be time and to "spare for them to twit the Tories when "they have sold all they have and given "the results to tho poor."