MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL'S CRITICS.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 174, 16 April 1908, Page 6

MR. WINSTON CHURCHILL'S CRITICS.

-7 —-—*— —■' .A' striking, and, to our mind, a most regrettable feature of some of the Press criticisms upon tlie changes in the British Government has been the bitter attacks upon Mr. Winston Churchill. Some of the New Zealand newspapers ■ —writing, it is only charitable to hope, in ignorance of the true facts —have suggested that Mr. Churchill at the head of the Colonial Office would dp his best to injure the overseas Empire. These critics would be hard put to it to find a" single substantial warrant for their references to the ex-TJnder-Sec-retary. So far as we are concerned, we have little admiration for the policy of tli>3 Colonial Office. A gam and again, under every Government, it has shown a want of sympathy with the. aspirations of the. colonies, and even a regrettable y/ant of knowledge of colo- . nial conditions and colonial feelings. Under Lord Elgin it has been no better and no worse than its traditions, and we fail to. see how the Under-Secretary be made responsible for the policy

of his chief and of the Government as a whole. Whenever Mr.' Churchill I hps referred to the relations between ' Great Britain and the self-governing dependencies, he has gone beyond a i formal sympathy with the overseas Im- j perialists, and has. on more than one < occasion struck the true Imperial note. \ Because he lias had to fight the battles of the Government against an unusually lively body of opponents, he has . come in for most of the abuse that should have 'been directed either at Lord Elgin or at the Government. In a vague way, therefore, the idea has grown up-amongst people who will not satisfy themselves with first-hand knowledge that Mr. Churchill has devoted most of his energies to'inflicting pain and injustice upon the autonomous Slates of the Empire. The charges now being implied 'against him should not be preferred without at least a pretence, of evidence. Real evidence simply does not exist. Injustice to a man who is 16,000 miles away, and who will probably not hear a fraction of what his far-away'critics are saying of him, is none the less unjust. V