POISON PLOT

Southland Times, Issue 17968, 8 March 1917, Page 5

POISON PLOT

AGAINST THE PRIME MINISTER. PRISONERS ON TRIAL. (By 'Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright) (Australian & N.Z. Cable Association.) LONDON, March 6. The Wheeldon trial, in which four persons are charged with a plot against Mr Lloyd George's life, opened at the. Old Bailey before Mr Justice Low'. It will probably last several days. All the prisoners pleaded not guilty. Sir F. E. Smith, K.C., Attorney-Gen-eral, submitted that the prisoners were a desperate body of people, bitterly hostile to this country. They had sheltered fugitives from the Army, and had done their best to injure Britain in the w r ar crisis. Discussing the motive leading people of middle class and good education to such moral degeneracy, Sir F. E. Smith said the jury would probably infer, firstly. that the prisoners entertained an intense, unreasoning hatred of the country, which was shocking; secondly, that they nursed a hatred of the measures necessitated by the war, and had a profound dislike for compulsion: thirdly, that they were actuated by hatred of the statesmen whose duty it was to recommend such measures.