“DUMPED FOREIGN GOODS."

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 7300, 2 December 1910, Page 4

“DUMPED FOREIGN GOODS."

It was only to be expected that the Tories should whimper under the enstigatidn they are receiving from' -Mr Lloyd George and Mr "Winston Churchill, but it is the height of absurdity for them toStalk about “coarse vituperation/' Tho moral of what is ?oing on

is that those who live in glass houses should bo the last to throw stones. Need any surprise be felt at the man who was called "Jack Cade” by one noble duke and “sx beggarly little Welsh attorney ” by another; whose effisy "‘as solemnly burnt at a Tory gathering in the park of another ornament to the peerage; whose followers have been described by the Duke of Bedford as " a pack of rapacious tatterdemalions” hitting back with all the force that ho possesses? During the past twelve months Mr Lloyd George has been the target for torrents of odiously-worded abuse by Primrose Leaguers and others from, one end of England to the other. His humble birth, bis religion, his professional position, his accent, have been made the subjects of cheap and vulgar satire.^ He has been denounced as “ traitor/' as " a rabid, reckless revolutionary’’—the whole gamut of abuse and misrepresentation. has been exhausted by his enemies. And, pace the Tories, and a local contemporary, he ought to take all these attacks u lying down 1 ” —turn an unslapped cheek to the foe, and with cowardly acceptance of the Tolstoyan doctrine of non-resistance, is to meekly submit, without retort, to further calumny. Such will not, we believe, bo the opinion of the majority of the British electors, for the average Briton has admiration for a man who stands up boldly to his opponent, and meets blow by blow. And in this connection let tis briefly allude to the' cabled opinions as to Mr Lloyd George’s plat-, form methods of two Parisian papers. Why the cable agent should have deemed it his duty to inform us what "Le Gaulois” and "Lo Journal des Debats'* have had to say upon British politics and British politicians passes our comprehension. The opinions in question have probably been reproduced in such papers as the "Daily Express’ and "Daily Mail/’ to which the very name of Lloyd George is anathema, and which eagerly reprint anything and everything, whatever its source, that may be damaging to the champion of the British democracy. Time was when whht "Lo Journal des Debats” said upon a political ■ situation carried a certain weight. To-day this particular journal exercises no influence whatever. Xt exists merely upon a long ago vanished reputation, its circulation being largely confined to libraries and clubs. It no more reflects educated French political opinion than does “Le Gaulois/' a journal founded to support the Bonapartist party, and devoted nowadays to a public espousal of the Royalist and reactionary cause in France. The adverse criticism of journals of this character, and of an obscure reactionary Viennese newspaper cannot be .taken seriously. But it is a curious commentary upon .the sincerity of the* Tory cry against "dumped imports” that tho tariff reform organs in London should be driven, to reproducing the futile impertinences of fourth-rate foreign journals. Mr Lloyd George and Mr Churchill have been frankly outspoken, and have wisely returned stroke for stroke. To turn to foreign critics for adverse comment upon the action of the Liberal leaders is surely a significant proof of the •weakness of the cause which stands in need of such support.