VOICES FROM THE TOMB.

Hastings Standard, Volume XIII, Issue 4303, 4 November 1909, Page 5

VOICES FROM THE TOMB.

STEAD AND THE DEAD. (Received 4, 8.10 a.m) London, November 3 Mr Stead denies that the "Gladstone" interview was a Radical trick to defend its inconsistencies. He had authority to state that Lord Beaconsfield was equally ready to respond to inquiries. Lord Beaconsfield had already expressed advice through "Julia" that the Lords should pass the Budget. Several critics have expressed much sympathy for Mr Stead. [The "Lyttelton Times," commenting on Mr Stead's political experiment of calling up the spirit of W. E. Gladstone from the vasty deep, whether in sincerity or in farce, says it has surely nothing to recommend it. Most of us would desire, after life's fitful fever, to sleep well, to be beyond the reach of steel or poison, .malice or treason. "De mortuis nil nisi bonum," the protective rule of the dead, would cease to have force if the rash living successfully invoked the giants of past generations to engage in current controversy, and it were a kindness alike to the living and to the dead to respect the enfolding silence of the grave and leave to its eternal rest the weary soul.]