ESTABLISHED 1868. The Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. WEDNESDAY APRIL 26 1916. LLOYD GEORGE AND THE NATION.

Marlborough Express, Volume L, Issue 97, 26 April 1916, Page 4

ESTABLISHED 1868. The Marlborough Express PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. WEDNESDAY APRIL 26 1916. LLOYD GEORGE AND THE NATION.

Tlie venomous and cowardly attack made upon Mr Lloyd George by Mr A. G. Gardiner, editor of the London Daily News, has naturally been tht> subject of considerable comment in the Old Country. Mr Gardiner, but three or four years ago, was belauding Mr Lloj'd George to the skies as the brainiest, most self-sacrificing, most honest of British statesmen. In a book of personal sketches of famous statesmen —"Prophets, Priests, and Kings"—Mr Gardiner grew positively lyrical in enumerating the qualities* of his then hero. Now to-day, in an "open letter" to the British Minister for Munitions, Mr Gardiner, goes to the other extreme, and villi-fi-es Mr Lloyd George with all the disordered eloquence of a drunken fishwife. Lloyd George is, we rare now told, drunk with power, ambitious to the verge of criminality, a traitor to the British democracy, an enemy to. his people, a man to be feared.—and if possible driven out of office with the least delay. All this may seem very extraordinary to those who may be unacquainted with the exact ;condition?, under which the Daily News, once, many years ago, a much respected -organ-..0f British, Liberalism,but since sadly fallen from its old position. of dignity and influence, is how owned and. conducted. The principal proprietors are the Cadbury family, '. the well-known cocoa manufacturers. The Cadburys, are, by the way, Quakers, and to them nothihg could be mom repugnant than the idea of war. There can be little doubt that the proprietors;of the Daily News—Quakers, peace-at-a'ny-price people— dicta ted..the. policy of the Daily News, that policy which, before theVar, meant the advocacy of a Little Navy, a Little Army, and a complete abandonment of all .Imperialistic' principles. During the Boer War the Daily News ■excelled itself in mischievously .misrepresenting Lord Milner, and .afterwards Lord Kitchener, and when, later on, Mi;. Oh amber lain initiated his Tariff Reform propaganda, the •journal lost no opportunity of sneering at the very idea of trade within the Empire"- and Imperial. Preference,' and delighted in picturing the Oversea, Dominions as greedy, debt-laden, dishonest-, States, intent only on their own selfish ■ ends, clogs *on and hindrance's to the> interests of the Motherland. .■■-.-

All this, bad as it >vas, was as.,nothing.jto the extraordinary and .gross-, ly unpatriotic attitude assumed ,by the Daily News"during the three or four fateful days at the end of July, 1914. when it became- more and more certain, that, Great Britain would be involved in the war. Even fortyeight hours after it became, .known that Germany had 'ruthlessly violated Belgian neutrality and thrown down an insolent .gauntlet to Great Britain, which' was solemnly pledged to protect that neutrality, the Daily News came out with a-ridiculous and, under all' the circumstances, disgracefully unpatriotic "Stop the War" project, '.endeavoring to stir up public disorder by advocating amass meeting of protest against war in Trafalgar .Square. The hian who, "■.■ as editor, was re-r ■■sn.onsib.le. for the policy, of the Daily News in July, 1914, is the same man who to-day has the impudence to attack Mi" Lloyd George, the one man of all Britons after, and perhaps even equally with, Lord Kitchener, in whom'the great majority >M: the British nation, either in the Old Country, or in the Oversea Dominions, place their greatest confidence, and ot whom every Briton worth calling a Briton is justly proud. This campaign of belittlement, abuse, and mendacity of which Mr Gardiner would like to see Mr Lloyd George made the victim has lieen ho doubt dictated by the Quaker Cocoa Magnates, who, in their insensate hatred of the compulsion principle, are, apparently, desirous of poisoning theminds of their fellow-countrymen against one of the ablest, most i courageous, most determined and most genuinely patriotic statesmen Great. Britain hag.ever known, Pitt and Palmerston not exempted. : Fanatically enamoured of that exploded fetish Free Trade, under which Great Britain has.been subjected to a most unfair commercial rivalry, her home and foreign markets overrun with German goods, the Daily News is apparently indifferent to the real issue at stake in this awful war-ytho continued existence of the British Empire as an association of free and independent nations. It dare not, perhaps, openly preach the ridiculous doctrine of non-resistance, but it hates the very idea of compulsion as His Satanic Majesty is supposed to hate holy water, and in its blind nnd impotent rag" at th© very possibility of conscription replacing the- doubtfully successful voluntaryism now admittedly on its last legs—in England us in this country—it foams at the month against the great Liberal statesman for whom party fetishes and party interests have disappeared, and who has had the courage to tell his countrymen the truth and boldly uivj -evidence of the faith that is m him by' championing an adoption of the only means by which, rightly or wrongly, but'always honestly, h» con- i siders that ultimate victory _ may be '. achieved. As for Mr Gardiner, his j personal opinion, good, bad, or in- ! different, about Mr Lloyd George is | not worth the proverbial "tinker's | curse." He i-s simply the paid tool i and contemptible agent of l;is far

more contemptible and cowardly proprietors, who, in their fanatical championship of the cause of the shirkers and cowards of England, are willing even that the Allies should run the risk oi disaster. The attack was as insidious as it was unfair, it sought to embroil Mr Lloyd George with his colleaguesS., especially Mr Asquith. Herein it failed, for the crisis is over, and bath Mr Asquith and Mr Lloyd George are still working together, as we have no doubt, with absolute loyalty to each other as to the King 'and country they both serve. Mr Lloyd George's own reference to tho attack is dignified and, in Us brevity, significantly contemptuous; but it is noticeable that tho most powerful democratic organ in London, Revnolds's Newspaper, has taken up the cudgels in his behalf, and warmly reprobates tho disgraceful attacks of the "baser sort" of Radical journalists of whom Mr Gardiner is such an objectionable type. Out here in Australia and New Zealand the utmost sympathy will be expressed with Mr 'Lloyd George, and when the exact conditions 'which govern ' the editorial control of the Daily News are recognised, the opinions expressed by Mr Gardiner will in future be received with supreme contempt.