LIBEL ACTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19014, 9 November 1923, Page 5

LIBEL ACTION

MR CHURCHILL IMPUGNED. BATTLE OF JUTLAND RECALLED. Brass Association—By Telegraph—Copyright LONDON, November 7. Lord Alfred Douglas has been committed for trial at. Bow Street, on nail amounting to £2OO, on a charge of criminally libelling Mr Winston Churchill in a pamphlet entitled “The Murder of Kitchener and the Truth About the Battle of Jutland and the Jews,” in which he alleged that the late Sir Ernest Cassel gave Mr Churchill a large sum for issuing a false report of the battle of Jutland, thereby assisting to bring off a financial coup. Sir Richard Muir (for the prosecution) pointed out that Mr Churchill was not a member of the Cabinet at the time of the battle of Jutland, and Mr Churchill and Lord Balfour, on the occasion of Lord Douglas’s recent libel action against the Morning Post, gave evidence that xVlr Churchill had had nothing to do with the 1 first Admiralty communique regarding the battle.—Reuter. In July last Lord Alfred Douglas sued the Morning Post lor alleged libel contained in a letter from the editor of the Jewish Guardian, whicli i e Morning Post published. The .mending paragraph stated: “It must no longer be a paying proposition to men like Mr Crosland and Lord Alfred Douglas to invent vile insults against the Jews.” Mr Patrick Hastings, for the defence, quoted an accusation from ixord Alfred Douglas’s paper, Plain English, that, a certain Cabinet. Minister had dratted a false report of the Jutland battle, which had caused such a fall in stocks that a group of Jews had cleared £18,00'0,000 in profits on the subsequent rise. Other allegations made by Lord Douglas were that the Jews planned Earl Kitchener’s death, that ex-Minister Sir Alfred Mond would destroy the Christian race by all the the means in his power, that a powerful personage at the Admiralty was in constant wireless communication with the Germans during the battle of Jutland, that an Admiralty traitor recalled the destroyers to Harwich in order to enable the German fleet to escape, and lastly that the British Government received payment on a sixtyfour basis to let the German fleet escape. He admitted that the bulk of the allegations were based on second-hand information. Mr Churchill, in evidence, said that there was not a single word of truth in the allegagation that he was in the hands of the Jews. There was not the slightest truth in the statement that he entered into a compact with Jews or anybody else in reference to the Jutland report. It was an absolute lie to say that Sir Ernest Cassel of anybody else had paid him anything for the part ho played in the matter. He had nothing to do with the preparation of the Jutland report, and did not see it till it appeared in the newspapers. The plaintiff was awarded id damages, each party being ordered to pay its own costs.