FOR WHAT PURPOSE?

Evening Post, Volume XCVI, Issue 40, 15 August 1918, Page 2

FOR WHAT PURPOSE?

Lord Solborne, to farmers at Darlington :

"We have read with great pain and indignation the accounts of a notorious trial in which a statement had. been made that a black bonk existed in which were thousands of names of some of the best of our fellow-countrymen and countrywomen. There is not oiie.shadow nf shade of evidence given that any such book exist..". Suppose it does exist, do you think you are going to find the truth about English men nnd women in a German .Government compilation ? Do we not- know from all'our -hitter experience of this war that the first weapon to which that Government goes is a weapon of falsehoods'? '-Even'-if,, therefore, this book exists, it is a German book comniled for German official- purposes. "What names have been drajreed before the world in connection with this notorious trial? The names of some of our glorious de-id—the son of Lord Bosebery, a. man honoured by his fellowcountrymen. 'The colonel of the reeiment who saw that noble young officer killed writes to say that flic whole atorv is a lie. Another. ex-Prime Minister whose name was dragged into this trio.l was Mr. Asqnith. T hive for .thirty years been a political opponent of Mr.' Asrjuith, and I am his opponent to day. but T speak for t-lie whole of the political party to which J belong when I say that we repudiate as an abominable lie the suggestion that Mr. Asnnith's private life is not clean and noble, or that he is not a loyal and devoted servant of his Kins; and country. Ts this to be'"the end of our four years' experience of the horrors of this war. when all have tried to do their duty? Is this to be tho result of the deaths which our sons have died on the sea and in the trenches all the world over? Is this to be the beginning of our reconstruction—of that better England foi\ which we all pra,v ?" (Cheers.) " .