SIR JOHN FINDLAY AND GERMANY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1221, 1 September 1911, Page 6

SIR JOHN FINDLAY AND GERMANY.

Sir,-In his speech at Snhij<Ws banquet, Sir John Findlay is reported to hav-o said that. Germany ccnirontea un as our rival, and that no man who understood the position cculd deny the fact that-some day betwctn these two nations this thing must be fought out. This reads strangely in a-speech in which John Bums is quoted as nil authority, and makes one wonder with Sir John Findlav can have been a?s:ciating during his stav in the Old Country. No one who knows "anything of x British politics can .imagine <lolm Burns, or any responsible leader either of the Liberal or Labour parfv, endorsing such a sentiment, nor yet me views also expressed cr implied by Sir John Findlay that all emigrants to foreign countries necessarily go to swell the number of our foes, and that the object of the existence of the British Empire is to defy the world. Yet one would expect a man of Sir John Findlny's political predilections to be ready to admit that these men understand the position at least as well as the Tory scaremongers of the Navy aaid National Service Leagues. Even supposing it had been warranted bv the facts, such an utterance from a Minister of the Crown is surely, to say the least of it, indiscreet. Our Ministers ought to reeogniso that the higher status to which wo have been admitted in Imperial affairs brings with it added responsibilities, and involves the obligation to observe a decent reticence in their references to our relations with foreign and (officially at least) friendly powers.—l am, etc., - M.A.