LIBELLING STATESMEN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 9504, 29 May 1913, Page 5

LIBELLING STATESMEN.

MARCONI CONTRACT SENSATION CECIL CHESTERTON ON TRIAL. CABINET MINISTER IN THE WITNESS BOX. (Bi Elictbio TiuoßAPfl—Coptbioht.) (Pbb Pbib§ AftsncunoH.) LONDON, May 27. Cecil Charleston'* criminal libel trial hae begun. Tlio Postmaster-General, Hon. Herbert Samuel, testified that the Imperial wireless iiegotiations did not originate with him. He held no communication with Sir Rufus Isaacs (Attorney-General) from first to last. He declared that the statement in the newspaper New Witness that he and Isaacs and the secretary arranged that the public should pay large sums to the Marconi Company was a wicked, childish falsehood. Such an arrangement was inconceivable even if the Minister were wrongheaded and dishonest enough to desire to enter such a contract, inasmuch as six Government departments had to examine and approve of the terms. THE ALLEGATIONS. SOME SWEEPING DENUNCIATIONS. Cecd Chesterton, who is standing his trial for criminal libel, is a younger broher of Gilbert K. Chesterton, the famous English writer. He succeeded Mr Hillaire Belloc, the friend of "G.K.C.", as editor t if the Eye Witness, an almost unknown journal whose name he changed to the New Witness, and it soon became notorious Sy its furious attack on the whole of the Marconi dealings. The editor threw down ' :ho gauntlet in the' following characteristic announcement:—"lf the chairman of he Marconi Committee, or anyone else, , wishes to find the person responsible for what has been said in the Eye Witness and he Now Witness since June, 1912, the editor, whose name, Cecil Chesterton, ap- ' ;>cai'3 above, is that person." Here are >no or two of the choice remarks about ' prominent men in the Marconi transactions, published in the New Witness from August to January last: —"What progress s the Marconi scandal making? We ask ho question merely from curiosity, and jnder no illusion as to the inevitable end >f the affair. Everybody knows the record )f Isaacs and his father and uncle, and n general the whole family. Isaac's broher is chairman of the Marconi Company. If. ha 6 therefore been secretly arranged xMween Isaacs and Samuel that the British ieoplo shall give the Marconi Company i very large sum of money through the agency of the said Samuel and for the K?ncfit of the said Isaacs. . . . Another eason why the swindle—or, rather, theft -impudent and barefaced as it is, will go 1 hrough is that we have in this country 10 method of punishing men who are i ;uilty of this kind of thing. In other ( ountrics people who act in this fashion 1 re driven from publio life." , "As we go to press the measure of confi- j lenco which cosmopolitan finance has in i >ur politicians is afforded by the progress >f Marconi shares. When Samuel was •aught with his hand in the till (or Isaacs, f you put it in that way) tho shares natually slumped. . . They note that no »art of the official press belonging to ither half of the machine is allowed to nention the stinking business." "Wo said last week that the conspiraors who engineered the Marconi deal were >n the run. In view of what ha« happend since we do not think that anyone can loubt we were right. Samuel, the Post-naster-General, and his cousins in the •ity who pulled the wires over Indian -ilver and Indian loan, the Amsterdam tews with whom these cousins maintained I •uch curious and suspicious relatione; * saacs, who qualified by a hammering on b ho Stock Exchange for the post of At- • orney-General; his brother, the chairnan of the defaulting St. David's Gold t Vfines Company and the author of its erotic dividends; George, the keeper of r he /nation's exchequer—all are smitten I 1 •vith panic. They will do anything and 'are anything rather than run the risk of ° ho truth corning to light." About Godfrey Isaacs, who ie prosecut- * rig Chesterton, the latter makes the fol- " owing remarks:— t "This is the man who is now managing lirector of the Marconi companies, the brother of the Attorney-General, whoso v luty it is to see that promoters of com- T ,ianies of the class we have described are jut out of harm's way. . . . The files afc Somerset House of tho Isaac's i.ompanies to which we have drawn attention cry out for vengeance on the man who created them, who mentioned them alio filled them with his creatures, who worked them solely for his own ends, and who sought to get rid of some of them when thoy had served his purpose by cast\ns the expenses of their burial on to the public purse. We call upon the Attorney- r General to do his duty, irrespective of J: blood relationship with this man Godfrey Charles Isaacs, and we do not intend to rest until he has performed it." ANOTHER COURT CASE. , £1,000,000 INVOLVED. LONDON, May 27. Mr Oliver Lockor-Lampson, M.P., and Mr Peter Wright, shareholders in the English Marconi Company, have issued a writ against Godfrey and Harry Isaacs (brothers of Sir Rufus Isaacs), Hoybourne (the sharebroker), Marconi and other directors of the company, to recover from them the difference between the sale price and the par value of 500,000 American ■ Marconi shares. There is about £1,000,000 , involved.