GERMAN-BORN HELPERS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 141, 12 December 1923, Page 5

GERMAN-BORN HELPERS

REMARKABLE SUGGESTIONS.

(ONITBD PRESS ASSOCIATION.—COPIRISBT.)

(SYDNEY' SUN CABLE.)

(Received 12th December, 1.15 p^n*) LONDON, 11th December.

Mr. Hayes, counsel for Lord Alfred Douglas, said: "I suggest that Sir Ernest Cassel influenced and dominated Mr. Churchill for twenty years before and after Jutland." Replying to Mr. Justice Avory, who inquired the purpose of cross-examinations he said that a Cabinet including Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, Viscount Grey, and Mr. Churchill had sent Sir Ernest Cassel on a naval mission to Germany during the Agadir crisis in the hope 'of averting war. Was there not, Mr. Hayes asked, a British-born subject more qualified than a German-born?

Mr. Churchill: "It was a way of getting into touch with the Kaiser, with whom Sir Ernest Cassel, a faithful and loyal British subject, was persona grata. The result was a better, Anglo-German understanding."

Mr. Hayes: "Why was the Gefmanborn Sir Edgar Speyer made a, \ Privy Councillor in 1912?" Mi\ Churchill: "You had better ask Miv Asquith. He admitted him. Sir Edgar Speyer was afterwards deprived of--His honours o\viiig to his behaving improperly." Mr. Hayes asked if th& Cabinet trusted both Cafcsel and Speyer, and Mr. Churchill said it did. He denied that when he attended the Kiel Regatta on the eve of the war he allowed the Kaiser to humbug himself The Cabinet did not think that Germany intended war before the Serajovo murder. He denied that Sir Ernest Casse! had influenced him regarding the German overtures. ili only deeired to prevent ah Anglo-German breach, lie also denied the allegation that lie had remarked ill conversation in 1919 that "the Jutland business was a bit thick, but we got money out of it by working the stock exchanges on the false communique."