 Chapter 18 of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Candace Tuttle. Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Macy Ward. Chapter 18 The Eyewitness The publication of What's Wrong with the World brings us to 1910. Gilbert had, as we have seen, originally intended to call the book What's Wrong, laying some emphasis on the note of interrogation. It amused him to perplex the casual visitor by going off to his study with the muttered remark, I must get on with What's Wrong. The change of name and the omission of the note of interrogation both changes the act of his publishers, represented a certain loss. For indeed Gilbert was still asking himself what was wrong when he was writing this book, although he was very certain what was right. His ideals were really a clear picture of health. His doubts about the achievement of those ideals in the present world and with his present political allegiance were, as he suggests in the autobiography, vague but becoming more definite. Did this mean that he ever looked hopefully towards the other big division of the English political scene, the Tory or Conservative Party to which his brother had once declared he belonged without knowing it? That would be a simpler story than what really happened in his mind. And I confess that I myself am sufficiently vague and doubtful about part of what the Chester Bellock believed they were discovering, to find it a little difficult to describe it clearly. Cecil Chesterton and Bellock set down their views in a book called The Party System. Gilbert made his clear in letters to the Liberal Press. The English Party System had often enough been attacked for its obvious defects. And indeed the new witnesses, even livelier contemporary John Bull, was shouting for its abolition. But Bellock and Cecil Chesterton had their own line. Their general thesis was that not only did the people of England not govern, Parliament did not govern either. The Cabinet governed, and it was chosen by the real rulers of the Party. For each Party was run by an oligarchy and run roughly on the same lines. Lists were given of families whose brothers-in-law and cousins, though not yet their sisters and their aunts, found place in the Ministry of one or other political Party. Moreover, the governing families on both sides were in many cases connected by birth or marriage and all belonged to the same social set. But money too was useful. Men could buy their way in. Each Party had a fund, and those who could contribute largely had of necessity and influence on Party policy. The existent Liberal government had brought to a totally new peak the art of swelling its fund by the sale of titles, which in many instances meant the sale of hereditary governing powers, since those higher titles which carry with them a seat in the House of Lords were sold like the others, at a higher rate, naturally. For the rank-and-file member, a political career no longer meant the chance for talents and courage to win recognition in an open field. A man who believed that his first duty was to represent his constituents stood no chance of advancement. Certainly a private member could not introduce a bill as his own and get it debated on its merits. None of this was new, though the book did it rather exceptionally well. What was new was the theory that the two Party oligarchies were secretly one that the fights between the parties were little more than sham fights. The ordinary Party member was unaware of this secret conspiracy between the leaders and would obey the call of the Party whip and accept a sort of military discipline with the genuine belief that the defeat of his Party would mean disaster to his country. Belick had discovered for himself the impotence of the private member. He had, as we have seen, been elected to Parliament by South Salford in 1906 as a liberal. In Parliament he proposed a measure for the publication of the names of subscribers to the Party funds. Naturally enough the proposal got nowhere. Also naturally enough the Party funds were not forthcoming to support him at the next election. He fought and won the seat as an independent. At the second election of 1910 he declined to stand, having lucidly explained to the House of Commons in a final speech that a seat there was of no value under the existing system. Thus Belick's own experience and a thousand other things went to prove the stranglehold the rulers of the Party had on the Party. But did it prove, or did the book establish, the theory of a behind-scenes conspiracy between the small groups who controlled each of the great historical parties which was the theme not only of the Party system but also of Belick's brilliant political novels, notably Mr. Clutterbuck's election and Pongo and the Bull. Of the stranglehold there was no doubt and Gilbert soon found it too much for his own allegiance to the Liberal Party or any other. At the election of 1910 he addressed a Liberal meeting at Beaconsfield and dealt vigorously with constant Tory questions and interjections from the back of the hall. He obviously enjoyed the fight and a little later he spoke for the League of Young Liberals and was photographed standing at the back of their van. But although he went to London to vote for John Burns in Battersea and would probably have continued to vote Liberal or Labour, he showed at a woman's suffrage meeting in 1911 a growing skepticism about the value of the vote. He was reported as saying, If I voted for John Burns now I should not be voting for anything at all. Laughter. It must have been irritating that this interpolation laughter was liable to occur when Chesterton was most serious. He did not change quickly but in the alteration of his outlook towards his party his growing doubt whether it stood for any real values he was very serious. As it followed the coming into power of Liberalism there were a multitude of acts described as of little importance and passed into law after little or no discussion. At the same time private members complained that they could get no attention for really urgent matters of social reform. The nation, as a party paper, defended the state of things and talked of official business and of want of time. Their attitude was vigorously attacked by Gilbert whose first letter, January 17, 1911, ended with this paragraph. Who ever dreamed of getting perfect freedom and fullness of discussion except in heaven? The case urged against cabinets is that we have no freedom and no discussion except that laid down despotically by a few men on front benches. Your assurance that Parliament is very busy is utterly vain. It is busy on things the dictators direct. That small men and small questions get squeezed out among big ones that is a normal disaster. With us, on the contrary, it is the big questions that get squeezed out. The party was not allowed really to attack the South African War for fear it should alienate Mr. Asquith. It was not allowed to object to Mr. Herbert Gladstone or is it Lord Gladstone? This blaze of democracy blinds one. When he sought to abolish the habeas corpus act and leave the poorer sort of pickpockets permanently at the caprice of their jailers. Parliament is busy on the aristocratic fads and mankind must mark time with a million stamping feet while Mr. Herbert Samuel searches a gutter boy for cigarettes. That is what you call the congestion of Parliament. The editor of the nation was so rash as to append to this letter the words, we must be stupid for we have no idea what Mr. Chesterton means. This was too good an opening to be lost. G.K. returned to the charge and I feel that this correspondence is so important in various ways that the next two letters should be given in full. Sir, in a note to my last week's letter you remark, we must be stupid but we have no idea what Mr. Chesterton means. As an old friend I can assure you that you are by no means stupid. Some other explanation of this unnatural darkness must be found and I find it in the effect of that official party phraseology which I attack and which I am by no means alone in attacking. If I had talked about true imperialism or our loyalty to our gallant leader, you might have thought you knew what I meant because I meant nothing. But I do mean something and I do want you to understand what I mean. I will therefore state it with total dullness in separate paragraphs and I will number them. 1. I say a democracy means a state where the citizens first desire something and then get it. That is surely simple. 2. I say that where this is deflected by the disadvantage of representation it means that the citizens desire a thing and tell the representatives to get it. I trust I make myself clear. 3. The representatives, in order to get it at all, must have some control over detail but the design must come from popular desire. Have we got that down? 4. You, I understand, hold that English MPs today do thus obey the public in design, varying only in detail. This is a quite clear contention. 5. I say they don't. Tell me if I am being too obstruous. 6. I say our representatives accept designs and desires almost entirely from the cabinet class above them and particularly not at all from the constituents below them. 7. I say the people does not wield a parliament which wields a cabinet. I say the cabinet bullies a timid parliament which bullies a bewildered people. Is that plain? 7. If you ask why the people endure and play this game I say they play it as they would play the official games of any despotism or aristocracy. The average Englishman puts his cross on a ballot paper as he takes off his hat to the king and would take it off if there were no ballot papers. There is no democracy in the business. Is that definite? 8. If you ask why we have thus lost democracy I say from two causes. A. The omnipotence of an unelected body, the cabinet B. The party system which turns all politics into a game like the boat race. Is that all right? 9. If you want examples I could give you scores. I say the people did not cry out that all children whose parents lunch on cheese and beer in an inn should be left out in the rain. I say the people did not demand that a man's sentence should be settled by his jailers instead of by his judges. I say these things came from a rich group not only without any evidence but really without any pretense that they were popular. I say the people hardly heard of them at the polls but here I do not need to give examples but merely to say what I mean. Surely I have said it now. Yours, G.K. Chesterton January 26th, 1911 Editor's Note Mr. Chesterton is precise enough now but he is precisely wrong. There are grains of truth in his premises a bushel of exaggeration in his conclusions. We have not lost democracy the two instances which he alleges both of which we dislike are too small to prove so large a case. To this G.K. replied Sir, I want to thank you for printing my letters and especially for your last important comment in which you say that the Crimes and Children's Acts were bad but are too small to support a charge of undemocracy and I want to ask you one last question which is the question Why do you think of these things as small? They are really enormous One alters the daily habits of millions of people the other destroys the public law of thousands of years What can be more fundamental than food, drink, and children? What can be more catastrophic than putting us back in the primal anarchy in which a man was flung into a dungeon and left there till he listened to reason? There has been no such overturn in European ethics since Constantine proclaimed the cross Why do you think of these things as small? I will tell you unconsciously no doubt but simply and solely because the front benches did not announce them as big They were not first-class measures they were not full-dressed debates The governing class got them through in the quick, quiet, secondary way in which they pass things that the people positively detest not in the pompous, lengthy oratorical way in which they present measures that the people merely bets on as it might on a new horse A first-class measure means, for instance tinkering for months at some tottery compromise about a religious education that doesn't exist The reason is simple sound church teaching and dogmatic Christianity both happen to be hobbies in the class from which the cabinets come But going to the public houses and going to prison are both habits with which that class is unfortunately quite unfamiliar It is ready, therefore, at a stroke of the pen to bring all folly into the taverns and all injustice into the jails Yours, G. K. Chesterton February 2, 1911 It was not only in the nation that such letters as these appeared We can't write in every paper at once runs a letter in the New Age We do our best We meant Gilbert, Cecil and Hilaire Bellock And G. K. goes on to answer four questions which have been put by a correspondent signing himself Political Journalist First, in whose eyes but ours has the party system lost credit? I say and nearly everybody's If this were a free country I could mention offhand a score of men within a stone's throw An innkeeper, a doctor, a shopkeeper, a lawyer, a civil servant As it is, I may put it this way In a large debating society I proposed to attack the party system and for a long time I could not get an opposer At last I got one He defended the party system on the ground that people must be bamboozled more or less Second, he asks if the party system does not govern the country to the content of most citizens I answer that Englishmen are happy under the party system solely and exactly as Romans were happy under Nero This is not because government was good but because life is good even without good government Nero's slaves enjoyed Italy, not Nero Modern Englishmen enjoy England but certainly not the British Constitution The legislation is detested wherever it is even felt The other day, a Cambridge Don complained that when out bicycling with his boys he had to leave them in the rain while he drank a glass of cider Count the whole series of human souls between a costar monger and a Cambridge Don and you will see a nation in mutiny Third, what substitute, et cetera, et cetera Here again the answer is simple and indeed traditional I suggest we should do what was always suggested in the riddles and revolutions of the recent centuries In the 17th century phrase I suggest that we should call a free parliament Fourth, is democracy compatible with parliamentary government? God forbid Is God compatible with church government? Why should he be? It is the other things that have to be compatible with God A church can only be a humble effort to utter God A parliament can only be a humble effort to express man But for all that there is a deal of common sense left in the world and people do know when priests or politicians are honestly trying to express a mystery and when they are only taking advantage of an ambiguity G.K. Chesterton Encouraged by the excitement that had attended the publication of the party system its authors decided to attempt a newspaper of their own This paper is still in existence but it has in the course of its history appeared under four different titles To avoid later confusion I had better set these down at the outset The Eyewitness, June 1911 through October 1912 The New Witness November 1912 through May 1923 G.K.'s Weekly 1925 through 1936 The Weekly Review 1936 till today During the first year of its existence the Eyewitness was edited by Bellick Cecil Chesterton took over the editorship after a short interregnum during which he was assistant editor Charles Granville had financed it When he went bankrupt the title was altered to The New Witness When Cecil joined the army in 1916 G.K. became editor In 1923 the paper died but two years later rose again under the title G.K.'s Weekly After Gilbert's own death Bellick took it back Today, as the Weekly Review it is edited by Reginald Jeb, Bellick's son-in-law With all these changes of name the continuity of the paper is unmistakable Its main aim may be roughly defined under two headings One, to fight for the liberty of Englishmen against increasing enslavement to a plutocracy Two, to expose and combat corruption in public life The fight for liberty appears in the letters quoted above in the form of an attack on certain bills Bellick unified and defined it with real genius in the articles which became two of his most important books The Servile State and the Restoration of Property If these two books be set beside Chesterton's What's Wrong with the World and The Outline of Sanity the Chester Bellick Sociology stands complete In his cobbitt, G.K. was later to emphasize the genius with which cobbitt saw the England of today a hundred years before it was there to be seen Bellick in the same way saw both what was coming and the way in which it was coming especially far-sighted was his attitude to Lloyd George's Compulsory Health Insurance Act It was the first act of the kind in England and the scheme in Outline was every week, every employed person must have a stamp stuck on a card by his employer of which he paid slightly less and the employer slightly more than half the cost The money thus saved gave the insured person free medical treatment and a certain weekly sum during the period of illness Agricultural laborers were omitted from the act and a ferment raged on the question of domestic servants who were eventually included in its operation It was practically acknowledged that this was done to make the act more workable financially For domestic servants were an especially healthy class and moreover, in most upper and middle-class households they were already attended by the family doctor without cost to themselves The company in which the eyewitness found itself in opposing this act was indeed a case of strange bedfellows for the opposition was led by the conservatives on the ground that the act was socialism Many a mistress and many a maid did I hear in those days in good conservative homes declaring they would rather go to prison than lick Lloyd George's stamps Most liberals on the other hand regarded the act as an example of enlightened legislation for the benefit of the poor The eyewitness saw in it the arrival of the servile state their main objections cut deep As with compulsory education but in much more far-reaching fashion this act took away the liberty and the personal responsibilities of the poor and in doing so put them into a category for ever-ticketed and labeled separated from the other part of the nation As people for whom everything had to be done they were increasingly at the mercy of their employers of government inspectors of philanthropic societies increasingly slaves What was meant by the servile state? It was, said Bellick, an arrangement of society in which so considerable a number of the families and individuals are constrained by positive law to labor for the advantage of other families and individuals as to stamp the whole community with the mark of such labor It was, quite simply, the return of slavery as the condition of the poor And the Chester Bellick did not think, then or ever that any increase of comfort or security was a sufficient good to be bought at the price of liberty In a section of the paper called Lex versus the poor the editor made a point of collecting instances of oppression A series of articles attacked the mentally deficient bill whereby poor parents could have their children taken from them those children who most needed them and whom they often loved and clung to above the others And a Jewish contributor to the paper Dr. Ader pointed out in admirable letters how divided was the medical profession itself on what constituted mental deficiency and whether family life was not far more likely to develop the mind than segregation with other deficients in an institution To the official harriers of the poor were added further inspectors sent by such societies as the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children Cruelty to Children, as Gilbert often pointed out is a horrible thing but very seldom proved of parents against their own children The word was stretched to cover anything that these inspectors called neglect Lately we have read of a case and many like it were reported in the new witness where failure to wash children adequately was called cruelty And what was the remedy? To take away the father the breadwinner to prison for insufficient food and clothes to substitute destitution for insufficient care to remove the only one the child had to care for them at all always to break up the family Worst of all was the question of school attendance While a child of three was dying of starvation the mother was at the police court where she was fined for not sending an older child to school As she could not pay the fine her husband was sent to prison for a week A child died of consumption The parents said at the inquest they had not dared to keep her at home when she got sick for fear of the school inspector As he had in what's wrong with the world been fired by the thought of the landless poor of England so now these stories stirred Gilbert deeply He saw the philanthropist like the Pharisees unheeding the wisdom learned by the wise men at Bethlehem Saw them with their busy pencils peering at the mother's omissions while the vast crimes of the state went unchallenged He wrote a poem called The Neglected Child and dedicated in a glow of Christian charity to a philanthropic society The teachers in the temple they did not lift their eyes for the blazing star of Bethlehem or the wise men grown wise They heeded jot and tittle They heeded not a dot their rending voice and Rama and the children that were not Or how the panic of the poor choked all the fields with flight Or how the red sword of the rich ran ravening through the night They made their notes well-naked and monstrous and obscene a tyrant bathed in all the blood of men that might have been But they did chide our lady and tax her for this thing that she had lost him for a time and sought him sorrowing To most of the eyewitness group the fight for freedom was so bound up with the fight against corruption that all was but one fight I think that when they looked back they were much too inclined to see the shadow of Lloyd George behind them as well as around them that in fact the Liberal Party of those years had brought with it a new dissent in political decency a dissent which would have startled both Gladstone and the more cynical Disraeli Of this more when we come to Marconi Meanwhile there was certainly a whole lot to fight about and the group responsible for the witness not content with the pen formed a society entitled The League for Clean Government with Mr. John Scur as secretary This League specialised in promoting the candidate of independent members of Parliament for such vacancies as occurred between general elections and an attacking party placement Doubtless other elements were present at some of these by-elections but the League boasted its success on several occasions notably in the three defeats sustained by CFG Masterman Charles Masterman and Benwith Gilbert and Cecil Chesterton a member of the group of young Christian socialists that drew its inspiration in great part from Canon Scott Holland He had gone further than most of them in his practical sympathy and understanding for the destitute With a friend he had taken a workman's flat in the slums and he had written a somewhat florid but very moving book that the Christians experienced as well as observed He was one of the young Liberals who entered Parliament full of ardour to fight the battles of the poor The sequel as they saw it may best be told by Belick and Cecil Chesterton themselves in the party system they wrote Mr. Masterman entered Parliament as a liberal of independent views During his first two years in the House he distinguished himself as a critic of the Liberal Ministry He criticised their education bill He criticised with a special force the policy of Mr. John Burns at the local government board His conduct attracted the notice of the leaders of the party He was offered office, accepted it and since then has been silent except for an occasional rhetorical exercise in defence of the government One fact will be sufficient to emphasise the change On March 13th 1908 Mr. Masterman voted for the right to work bill of the Labour Party In May of the same year he accepted a place with a salary of £1,200 a year It has since risen to £1,500 On April 20th 1909 he voted at the bidding of the party whips against the same bill which he had voted for in the previous year Yet this remarkable example of the peril of change the title of one of Masterman's books was in peril of change Does not apparently create any indignation or even astonishment in the political world which Mr. Masterman adorns On the contrary, he seems to be generally regarded as a politician of exceptionally high ideals No better instance need be recorded of the peculiar atmosphere it is the business of these pages to describe At the succeeding general election Masterman was not re-elected and he failed again in a couple of by-elections In all these elections the League for Clean Government campaigned fiercely against him There was certainly in the feeling of Bellick and Cecil Chesterton towards Masterman a great deal of the bitterness that moved Browning to right Just for a handful of silver he left us And I do not think there is anything in the history of the paper that created so strong a feeling against it in certain minds There seemed something peculiarly generous in the continued attacks after a series of defeats in the insistence with which Masterman's name was dragged in always accompanied by sneers Replying to a remonstrance to this effect Cecil Chesterton, then editor of The New Witness stated that in his considered opinion it was a duty to make a successful career impossible to any man convicted of selling his principles for success I dwell on this matter of Masterman for two reasons The first is that it was one of the rare occasions on which Gilbert Chesterton disagreed with his brother and Bellick Gilbert was a very faithful friend it would be hard to find a broken friendship in his life He had moreover much of the power that aroused his enthusiasm in Browning of going into the depths of a character discovering the virtue concealed there And as with Browning his explanation took account of elements that really existed but could find no place in a more narrowly adverse view Many of my own best friends he wrote of Masterman entirely misunderstood and underrated him It is true that as he rose higher in politics the veil of the politician began to descend a little on him also but he became a politician from the noblest bitterness on behalf of the poor and what was blamed in him was the fault of much more ignoble men but he was also an organiser and liked governing only his pessimism made him think that government had always been bad and was now no worse than usual therefore to men on fire for reform he came to seem an obstacle and an official apologist After G.K. became editor of The New Witness the attacks on Masterman ceased but he did not differ from the two earlier editors in his views on the ethics of political action or the principles of social reform The second reason for which the Masterman matter must be dwelt on is because it affords the best illustration of one curious fact in connection with the eye and new witness campaign when the life of Masterman recently appeared I seized it eagerly that I might read an authoritative defence of his position I searched the index under eye witness new witness Cecil Chesterton and league for clean government no one of them was mentioned at last I discovered under bellock and scur a faint illusion to their activities at a by-election in which bellock was coupled with a Protestant alliance leader Kenseth as part of a contemptible opposition and the unnamed league for clean government described as those working with Mr. Scur clearly where it is possible to use against something powerful the weapon of ignoring it as though it were something obscure that weapon is itself a powerful one against the new witness it was used perpetually a paper which included among its contributors Hilaire Bellock G.K. Chesterton J.S. Fillmore E.C. Bentley Wells Shaw Catherine Tynan Desmond McCarthy F.Y. Eccles G.S. Street to name only those who come first to mind obviously stood high Cecil Chesterton's own editorials Hugh O'Donnell's picturesque series Twenty Years After the high level of the reviewing and oddly enough considering the paper's outlook the financial articles of Raymond Radcliffe were all outstanding the sales at six pence were never enormous but the readers were on a high cultural level the correspondence pages are always interesting the eyewitness group besides Courage had high spirits and they had wits Capulet's Rhymes the series of ballads written by Bering, Bentley, Fillmore, Bellock and G.K.C Mrs. Markham's History written by Bellock there was little of this quality in the other weeklies side by side with the serious attacks was a line of satire and of sheer fooling the silver deal in India was being attacked in the editorials while Mrs. Markham explained to Tommy how good kind Lord Swatling really a Samuel had lent money to his brother Mr. Montague another Samuel for the benefit of the poor people of India the next week Tommy and Rachel grew enthusiastic about the kindness of Lord Swatling in borrowing money that the Indian government could not use Mrs. Markham too made Rachel take a pencil and write out a list of Samuels including the Postmaster General now so busy over the Marconi case the next lesson was about titles then came one about policemen and finally about company promoters and investments how a promoter guesses there is oil somewhere how money is lent to dig for it but mama how can money dig how the company promoter may find no oil how if they think he has cheated them the rich men who lent their money can have him tried by twelve good men and true Tommy how do they know the men are good and true mama Mrs. M. they do this by taking them in alphabetical order out of a list perhaps the combination of irony veiling intensity of purpose with humor sometimes degenerating into wild fooling damned them in the eyes of many but there was a more serious obstacle to the real effectiveness they might otherwise have had when it was unavoidable to name the new witness its opponents referred to it as though to a rag why was this possible principally I think because of the violence of its language most parliamentary matters to which it made reference were spoken of as instances of foul corruption or dirty business transactions by ministers were said to stink while the ministers themselves were described as carrying off or distributing swag and bootle in volume two of the eye witness for instance we find the game of bootle dirty trick keep your eye on the railway bill you are going to be fleeced and stunt and ramp pass him Mr. Lloyd George and Sir Rufus Isaacs are always called George and Isaacs the general of the Salvation Army is invariably old booth while in the headlines the words scandal constantly recurs even admirers were at times like Fox's followers who groaned what a passion he was in tonight men in a passion must be in the wrong and heavens how dangerous when they're built so strong thus the great wig amid immense applause scared off his clients and balled down his cause undid reform by lauding revolution till cobblers cried God save the Constitution End of Chapter 18 Recording by Candace Tuttle Chapter 19 Part 1 of Gilbert Keith Chesterton This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Dick Bourgeois Doyle Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Maisie Ward Chapter 19 Part 1 Marconi In his autobiography Gilbert Chesterton has set down his belief that the Marconi scandal will be seen by historians as a landmark in English history to him personally the revelations produced by it were a great shock and gave the death blow to all that still lingered of his belief in the liberal party for the rest of his life it may almost be called an obsession with him in his eyes it was so great a landmark that as others spoke of events pre or post war he divided the political history of England into pre and post Marconi it meant as much for his political outlook as the enclosures for his social it is necessary to know what happened in the Marconi case if we are to understand a most important element in Chesterton's mental history the difficulty is to know what did happen the main lines of a very complicated bit of history have never so far as I know been disentangled by anyone whose only interest was to disentangle them and the partisans have naturally tangled them more I wrote a draft chapter after reading the 2000 page report of the parliamentary committee the 600 page report of Cecil Chesterton's trial and masses of contemporary journalism then in the circumstances I have related in the introduction I called in my husband's aid the rest of this chapter is mainly his what the ministers did the imperial conference of 1911 had approved the plan of a chain of state owned wireless stations to be erected throughout the British Empire the post office, Mr. Herbert Samuel being the postmaster general was instructed to put the matter in hand after consideration of competing systems the Marconi was chosen the Marconi wireless telegraph company of London of which Mr. Godfrey Isaacs was managing director was asked to tender for the work its tender was accepted on March 7th, 1912 the main terms of the tender were as follows the company was to erect stations in various parts of the empire at a cost to the government of 60,000 pounds per station these were then to be operated by the governments of the United Kingdom and the Dominions and colonies concerned and the Marconi company was to receive 10% of the gross receipts their agreement was for 28 years though the postmaster general might terminate it at the end of 18 years but there was one further clause clause 10 allowing for termination at any time if the government should find it advantageous to use a different system the acceptance of this tender was only the first stage a contract had to be drawn up and nothing would be finalized till this contract had been accepted by parliament in fact the contract was not completed till July 19th today it was placed on the table of the House of Commons for the understanding of the Marconi case the vital period is the four months of 1912 between March 7th when the tender was accepted and July 19th when the contract was tabled let us concentrate upon that four month period the postmaster general issued no statement whatever on the matter but on March 8th the company sent out a circular to its shareholders telling them the good news but making the news look even better than it was no meeting all reference to clause 10 which entitled the government to substitute some rival system at any time it pleased the postmaster general issued no correction because as he said later he had not been aware of the admission immediately after Godfrey Isaacs left for America to consider the affairs of the American Marconi company capitalized at $1,600,000 of which he was a director more than half its shares were owned by the English company on behalf of the English company he bought up the rights of the American company's principal rival and then sold these rights at a profit not stated but apparently very considerable to the American company for $1,400,000 to handle all this and allow for vast developments hoped for from this purchase and from a very favorable agreement Godfrey Isaacs had negotiated with Western Union the American company was to be reorganized as a $10 million company two million shares at $5 each the American company whose own repute in America was too low for any hope of raising money on that scale from the American public seems to have agreed to the Godfrey Isaacs plan only on condition that the English company should guarantee the subscription and Godfrey Isaacs made himself personally responsible for placing $500,000 shares it should be remembered that the pound was then worth just under $5 a $5 share was worth one pound one chilling three pence or one and a sixteenth pounds in English money Godfrey Isaacs returned to England on April 9th he lunched with his brothers Harry and Rufus Rufus being attorney general in the British government he told them of the arrangements he had made arrangements which were not yet known to the public and of the stock about to be issued and offered them a hundred thousand shares out of the five hundred thousand for which he had made himself responsible at the face value of one pound one chilling three pence Rufus refused one reason for his refusal being that the shares were not a good buy as the prospects of the company did not warrant so large a new issue of capital Harry took 50,000 we now come to the transactions which the public was to later lump together rather crudely as ministers gambling in Marconies A. On April 17th roughly a week after the luncheon Isaacs bought 10,000 of Harry's shares at two pounds he made the point later that buying from Godfrey would have been improper as Godfrey was director of a company with which the government was negotiating but it was all right to buy from Harry who had bought from Godfrey Harry having paid one pound one chilling three pence was willing to let Rufus have them for the same price but Rufus thought it only fair to pay the higher price this is all the more remarkable because only a week earlier he had thought these same shares bad value at roughly half the price he was now prepared to pay of this 10,000 shares Rufus immediately sold 1,000 to the chancellor of the exchequer David Lloyd George and 1,000 to the master of Ellie Bank who was chief whip of the liberal party then in office it is to be noted that no money passed at this time in any of those transactions Rufus did not pay Harry Lloyd George and Ellie Bank did not pay Rufus nor did the shares pass indeed the shares did not as yet exist as it was not till the next day April 18th that the American Marconi company authorized the issue of the new capital on the day after that April 19th the shares were put on the market at three pounds five shillings that same day they rose to four pounds in the course of the day Rufus Isaac sold 700 shares at an average price of three pounds six shillings six pence which on the face of it looks like clearing 3,000 more than he had paid for all the shares and still having 3,000 shares left but he explained later that there had been pooling arrangements between himself and his brother and himself and his two friends so that the upshot of his days transactions was that he had sold 2,856 of his own shares and 357 each for Lloyd George and Ellie Bank Rufus still had 6,430 shares of which 1,286 belonged to Lloyd George and Ellie Bank Rufus explanation boils down to this he and Harry had arranged that whatever either sold in the course of the day should be totaled and divided in the proportion of their holdings Rufus sold 7,000 shares Harry 10,850 a total of 17,850 Rufus had taken one-fifth of Harry's 50,000 shares so one-fifth of the shares sold were allotted to his i.e. 3570 Lloyd George and Ellie Bank had each taken a tenth of Rufus therefore each was considered to have sold 357 on April 20th these two sold a further 1,000 of their 1,286 shares at 3 pounds and 5 shillings per 32 B on May 22nd Lloyd George and Ellie Bank bought 3,000 more shares at 2 pounds and 5 shillings 32 as they were not due to deliver the shares previously sold by them at 3 pounds 6 shillings and 6 pants and 3 pounds and 5 shillings 32 till June 20th this new purchase had something in the look of a bear transaction C in April and May the master of Ellie Bank bought 3,000 shares for the account of the liberal party of whose funds he had charged these 3 transactions are all that the 3 politicians ever admitted and nothing more was ever proved against them as we have seen there was no documentary evidence of the principal transaction the one I have called A except that Rufus sold 7,000 shares on April 19th in his acquiring of the shares no broker was employed Rufus did not pay Harry for the shares until February 1913 some 9 months later when the inquiry was already on there was no evidence other than his own word that 10,000 was the number he had agreed to take or 2 pounds the price that he agreed to pay or that he had bought from Harry and not God for you or that the 7,000 shares he had certainly sold at a huge profit on April 19th half were sold to Harry there was indeed no evidence that the shares even on what they admitted they had obviously acted improperly the contract with the English Marconi company was not yet completed Parliament had not been informed of its terms Parliament therefore had yet to decide whether it would accept or reject it the 3 members of Parliament had committed 2 grave improprieties one they had purchased shares directly or at one remove from the managing director of a company seeking a contract from Parliament in circumstances that were practically equivalent to receiving a gift of money from them they received shares which the general public could not have bought until 2 days later and then only at over 50% more than the politicians paid on this count the fact that the shares were American Marconis made no difference the point is that they were valuable shares sold to ministers at a special low price this need not have been bribery but it is a fact that one way of bribing something from them at more than it is worth or sell something to them at less than it is worth HT Campbell of bullet Campbell and Grenfell the English Marconi company's official brokers gave evidence before the Parliamentary Committee that it would have been impossible for the general public to buy the shares before April 19th and as we have seen they opened on that day at 3 pounds and 5 shillings 2 they and through the chief whips action the whole liberal party though it did not know it were financially interested in the acceptance by Parliament of the contract for though they had not bought shares in the English company with which the contract was being made but with the American company which had no direct interest in the contract nonetheless it would have lowered the value of the American shares if the British Parliament had rejected the Marconi system and chosen some other in preference I may say at once that I feel no certainty that his action was a sinister effort to bribe ministers but had it been exactly the right ministers were chosen they were the chancellor of the exchequer who has charge of the nation's purse the attorney general who advises upon the legality of actions proposed the chief whip who takes the party forces into the voting lobby it was the same chief whip the master of elli bank that had carried the sale of honors to a new height in his devotion to the parliamentary inquiry on july 19th 1912 the contract was put on the table of the house of commons in the ordinary course it would have come up for a vote sometime before the end of the parliamentary session but criticism of the contract was growing on the ground that it was too favorable to the Marconi company and rumors were flying that members of the government had been gambling in Marconi shares which as we have seen they had though not in English Marconis even before the tabling of the contract members of parliament notably major archer she a conservative had been harrying Mr. Herbert Samuel the postmaster general on july 20th and in weekly articles following it was attacked as a thoroughly bad contract by a writer in the outlook Mr. W. R. Lawson on august 1st a labor member asked a question in the house about the rising price of Marconis the feeling that inquiry was needed was so strong that on august 6th the last day but one of the session the prime minister who knew something of his colleague's purchase of Marconis but never mentioned it promised the house that the Marconi agreement would not be rushed through without full discussion in spite of this Herbert Samuel and Ellie bank both tried hard to get the contract approved that day or next when it was quite clear that parliament would not allow this Herbert Samuel insisted on making a general statement on the contract he knew of the minister's dealings in American Marconis but did not mention them there was no debate or division the question of ratification or rejection was postponed till the house should meet again in October the argument he put to major archer she MP was that the stations were urgently needed for imperial defense on august 8th Cecil Chesterton's paper the new witness launched its first attack on the whole deal though without reference to ministerial gambling in Marconis under the headline the Marconi scandal Isaac's brother is chairman of the Marconi company it has therefore been secretly arranged between Isaac's and Samuel that the British people should give the Marconi company a very large sum of money through the agency of the said Samuel and for the benefit of the said Isaac's incidentally the monopoly that is about to be granted to Isaac's number two through the ardent charity of Isaac's number one and his colleague the postmaster general is a monopoly involving antiquated methods the refusal of competing tenders far cheaper and far more efficient and the saddling of this country with corruptly purchased goods which happened to be inferior goods the article went on to say that these swindles were apt to occur in any country but that England alone lacked the will to punish them it is the lack of even a minimum standard of honor urging even honest men to protest against such villainy that has brought us where we are in September L.J. Max's national review had a criticism of the contract by Major Archer Shea MP with editorial comment as well in the same month the morning post and the spectator pressed for further inquiry the October number of the national review contained a searching criticism of the whole business and called special attention to the stock exchange gamble in American Marconis a few days later on October 11th the reassembled House of Commons held the promise debate in the light of what we know it is fascinating to read how nobody told a lie exactly and truth was concealed all the same here is Sir Rufus Isaacs he begins by formulating the rumors against Mr. Herbert Samuel and Mr. Lloyd George and himself but he is careful to formulate them in such a way that he can truthfully deny them the rumors he says were that the minister's adult and the shares of a company with which the government was negotiating a contract never from the beginning if I had one single transaction with shares of that company literally true as you see the contract was with the English company the shares he had bought were in the American company he made no allusion to that purchase Mr. Herbert Samuel who is not accused of having purchased shares himself but who knew of what his colleagues had done treads the same careful lying I say that these stories that members of the cabinet knowing the contract was in contemplation and feeling that possibly the price of shares might rise themselves directly or indirectly bought any of those shares or took any interest in this company through any other party whatever have not one syllable of truth in them neither I myself nor any of my colleagues have at any time held one shillings worth of shares in this company directly or indirectly and have derived one penny profit from the fluctuations in their prices however he promised a parliamentary committee to inquire into the whole affair Isaacs had denied any transactions with that company Samuel with this company neither had ventured to say the English company for that would instantly have raised the question of the American company it is not a truth that has to be phrased so delicately Lloyd George the first of the ministers to speak managed better he flew into a rage with an interjector the honorable member said something about the government and he has talked about rumors I want to know what these rumors are if the honorable gentleman has any charge to make against the government as a whole or against individual members of it I think it ought to be stated openly the reason why the government wanted a frank discussion before going to committee was because we wanted to bring here these rumors these sinister rumors that have been passing from one foul lip to another behind the backs of the house he sat down still in a white heat without having denied anything the master of Elliebank did not deny anything either he was not there he was indeed no longer in the House of Commons he had inherited the title of Lord Murray of Elliebank he had left England in August and did not return till the inquiry was over nor did he send any communication of any sort as we have seen no literal lie was told but parliament in the country assumed that the ministers had denied any gambling and Marconi's of any sort and the ministers must have known that this was what their denials had been taking to mean Rufus Isaac's son mentions a theory held by some though he thinks there are strong arguments against it that Rufus silence was due to instructions from the prime minister Mr. Asquith who was not anxious to have the connection of Lloyd George with the matter disclosed fearing that his personal unpopularity would lead to such an exasperation of the attacks that the prestige of the whole government might be seriously impaired Rufus Isaac's first Marcus of Reading pages 248 to 249 on October 29th the names were announced of the members appointed to the promised committee of inquiry as usual they represented the various parties in proportion to their numbers in the house the liberals were in office supported by Irish nationalists and labor members nine members of the committee including the chairman were from these parties six were conservatives one might have expected that the careful evasions in the house would have meant only a brief respite for the ministers who had been so economical of the truth they would appear before the committee and then the whole thing would emerge but though the committee was appointed at the end of October and met three times most weeks thereafter five months went by and no minister was called the plain fact is that Mr. Samuel's department the post office slanted the inquiry in a different direction right at the start by putting in evidence a confidential blue book and suggesting that Sir Alexander King secretary to the post office be heard first on the question of the goodness or badness of the contract itself the committee uncovered much that was interesting it emerged that the Paulson system had offered to erect stations at a cost of about 36,000 pounds less per station than the Marconi and that the Admiralty itself had estimated in a cost if they were undertaking the work had about the same as the Paulson offer but by a confusion as to whether their figure did or did not include freight charges the Admiralty estimate had been put down at 10,000 higher than it was nor was this the only confusion when Sir Alexander King spoke of concessions made to the government by the Marconi company he admitted under cross questioning that there was no written record of these concessions he spoke of various vitally important conversations was not able to produce a minute letters referred to were found to have been lost from the post office files further it appeared that while most rigid tests were to be required of the other systems the Marconi people had been constantly taken almost on their own word alone Mr. Isaacs and Mr. Marconi both told us said Sir Alexander King at one point when asked when he had any technical advice on the point of working you will excuse me said Mr. Harold Smith if for the moment I ignore the opinion of Mr. Marconi and Mr. Isaacs I ask you who was the expert who gave you this information then to as to the terms the government had proposed 3% on the gross takings Godfrey Isaacs had held out for 10% and got it moreover the royalty was to be paid as long as a single Marconi patent was in use at the stations considering that by the patents act the government had the legal right to take over any invention while paying reasonable compensation the provision which gave so high a royalty to the Marconi company was severely criticized again the right was given to the Marconi company to advise on any fresh invention that should be offered to the post office which meant that any invention made by the rivals was entirely at the remercy naturally enough the question was pressed home whether the post office had really sought the advice of its own technical experts it transpired that a technical subcommittee had been called once and had recommended a further investigation of the Polson system the report of this subcommittee had been shelved and the members never summoned for a second meeting early in 1913 the parliamentary committee against the advice of Herbert Samuel asked for a special subcommittee of experts to go into the merits of the various wireless systems and report within three months at latest it is not surprising that the new witness commented on this as a surrender of the most decided type for it proposes to do with Samuel himself clearly ought to have done before he entered into the contract the report of this technical subcommittee showed that there had been a good deal of exaggeration in the first attack by the new witness on the worth of the Marconi system if one single system was to be used it was the only one capable of carrying out the government's requirements but the subcommittee held that as wireless was in a state of rapid development it would be better not to be tied to any one system and they added that while the nature of the contract itself was not within their terms of reference they must not be held to approve it from its examination of the contract passed on to examine journalists and others as to the rumors against the ministers and still the ministers were not called. On February 12th 1913 L.J. Max editor of the national review was being examined by the committee suddenly he put his finger on the precise spot having expressed surprise at the non-appearance of the ministers he went on one might have conceived that they would have appeared at its first sitting clamoring to state in the most categorical and subject matter that neither directly nor indirectly in their own names or in other people's names have they had any transactions whatsoever either in London, Dublin, New York, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris or any other financial center in any shares in any Marconi company throughout the negotiations with the government. Any shares in any Marconi company. The direct question was at last put. On February 14th just two days later something very curious happened Lumetan, a Paris daily newspaper published a story to the effect that Mr. Max had charged that Samuel, Rufus Isaacs and Godfrey Isaacs had bought shares in the English Marconi company at 50 francs. About 2 pounds in those days before the negotiations with the government were started and had resold them at 200 francs, about 8 pounds when the public learned that the contract was going through. It was an extraordinary piece of paper to have printed such a story. Certainly Mr. Max had made no such charge. It was an extraordinary stroke of luck if the ministers wanted to tell their story in court that they should have this kind of clumsy libel to deny and is at least a coincidence that Rufus Isaacs happened as his son tells us to be in Paris when Lumetan printed the story. Samuel and Rufus Isaacs announced that they would prosecute and that Sir Edward Carson and F. E. Smith were their counsel. This decision to prosecute a not very important French newspaper while taking no such step against papers in their own country caused Gilbert Chester to write A Song of Cosmopolitan Courage in the new witness, Volume 1 Page 655 I am so swift to seize affronts my spirit is so high whoever has insulted me some foreigner must die. I brought a libel action for the times had called me thief against a paper in Bordeaux a paper called Le Juif. The nation called me cannibal. I could not let it pass. I got a retraction from a journal in Alsace and when the morning post raked up some murders I devised a Polish organ of finance at once apologized. I know the charges varied much. At times I am afraid. The Frankfort Frank withdrew a charge the outlook had not made and what the true injustice of the standards words had been was not correctly altered in the Young Turks magazine. I know it sounds confusing but as Mr. Lemel said the anger of a gentleman is boiling in my head. The hearing of the case against Le Matin came on March 19th as that paper had withdrawn and apologized only three days after printing the story there was no actual necessity for statements by Rufus Isaacs and Samuel but they had decided to answer Max's question to admit the dealings in American Marconis which they had not mentioned in the House of Commons or rather to get their lawyer to tell the story and then answer his questions on the matter in a court case where there could be no cross examination because the defendants were not contesting the case. Sir Edward Carson mentioned the American purchase at the end of a long speech almost as an afterthought really the matter is so removed from the charges made in the libel that I only go into it at all because of the position of the Attorney General and because he wishes in the fullest way to state this deal so that it may not be said that he keeps anything whatsoever back. As the Times remarked 9th of June 1913 the fact was stated casually as though it had been a matter at once trifling and irrelevant only persons of the most scrupulous honor who desired that nothing whatsoever should remain hid would it was suggested have thought necessary to mention it at all the statement was not really as full as Carson's phrasing would seem to suggest the court was told that Rufus Isaacs had bought 10,000 shares but not from whom he had bought them that he had paid market price but not what the price was nor that the shares were not on the market that he had sold 1,000 shares each to Lloyd George and Ellie Bank and had sold some on their behalf but not that these too had had further buying and selling on their own. It was stated for Sir Rufus and reiterated by him that he had lost money on the deal. The reason being that while he had gained on the shares sold the shares he still had had slumped. It is difficult to see why Rufus Isaacs and later Lloyd George made such a point of the loss on their Marconi transactions. They can hardly have bought the shares in order to lose money on them and their initial sellings showed a very large profit. Indeed, Rufus Isaacs loss depended on his having paid his brother two pounds for the shares and again upon the 7,000 shares he sold on the opening day being only partly on his behalf and there was only his word for these two statements. If Rufus lost he lost to his brother who had been willing to sell at cost price with whom he had a pooling arrangement and who made an enormous profit. If Rufus lost loss remained within the family. A week after the hearing of the Matank case Rufus Isaacs appeared for the first time before the parliamentary committee almost five months after its formation. His problem was not so much to explain his dealings in American Marconi as to account for his silence in the House of Commons. His one desire that day in Parliament it seems had been to answer the foul lies being uttered against him, which he was quite unable to find any foundation for, quite unable to trace the source of quite unable to understand how they were started. Obviously his dealings in American Marconi's could have no possible bearing on these rumors so he did not mention them. I confide my speech entirely to dealing with the four specific charges which I formulated. The chairman Sir Albert Spicer suggested that one way to scotch the rumors would have been to mention his investment in American Marconi's because both being Marconi's you could easily understand one might get confused with the other. This question always drove Rufus Isaac's into a rage and indeed he met all difficult questions with rages which to this day across the gulf of 30 years seems simulated and not convincingly. Why had he not earlier asked the committee to hear the story of the American shares? I took the view that I had no right to claim any preferential position and it seemed to me that it might almost savor of presumption if I had asked the committee to take my evidence or any minister's evidence out of the ordinary turn in which the committee desired it. All the same he had once written a letter to the committee asking to be heard but on consideration did not send it. During this examination the element of strain between the two parties on the committee which had been evident throughout the inquiry was very much intensified. Lord Robert Cecil and the conservatives courteously but tenaciously trying to get at the truth. The ministerialists determined to shield their man. There is a most unpleasing contrast between the earlier bullying of the journalists who after all were not on trial and the deference the majority now showed to ministers who were. Rufus Isaacs twisted and turned incredibly but he did admit to Lord Robert Cecil that he obtained the shares before they were available to the general public and at a price lower than that at which they were afterwards introduced to them. He tried later to modify his admission by saying that he had been told of dealings by others before April 17 but he could give no details and the evidence of the Marconi company's broker quoted above is decisive. Two points of special interest emerged from this evidence. The first was that he had not told the whole story in the Matan case. He now mentioned that Lloyd George and Ellie Bank had sold a further 1000 shares he held for them on the second day July 20th and went on to tell of the purchase 1000 shares by the same pair the so called bear transaction of May 22nd. The second was more unpleasing still. He admitted that he had told the story of the American Marconi's privately to two friends on the committee Messers Falconer and Booth who had kept the matter to themselves and had or at least appeared to have continually steered the committee away from this dangerous ground. Rufus Isaacs son actually says that his father had informed Mr. Falconer and Mr. Handel Booth privately of these transactions in order that they might be forearmed when the journalists came to give evidence. On March 28th, Lloyd George appeared before the committee. Mrs. Charles Masterman gives an account of Rufus Isaacs grooming Lloyd George before the event. There was a really very comic though somewhat alarming scene between Rufus and George in the following Sunday. George had to give evidence on the Monday the following day and discovered that George was still in a perfect fog as to what his transaction really had been and began talking about buying a bear. I have never seen Rufus so nearly lose his temper and George got extremely sulky while Rufus patiently reminded him what he had paid, what he still owed, when he had paid it, who to and what for. It was on that occasion also that Charlie and Rufus tried to oppress upon him with all the force in their power to avoid technical action to stick as closely as possible to the plainest and most ordinary language. As is well known, George made a great success of his evidence. C. F. G. Masterman page 255 I cannot imagine why she thought so. Hugh O'Donnell's description in the new witness of Isaacs and Lloyd George as they appeared before the committee accords perfectly with the impression produced by a reading of the evidence. While the simile of a panther at bay, anxious to escape his tooth and claw, might be applied to Sir Rufus Isaacs, something more like a rat in a corner might be suggested by the restless, snapping, furious little figure which succeeded. Let us compromise by saying that Mr. Lloyd George was singularly like a spitting angry cat, which it got perhaps out of serious danger from her pursuers, but which catterwalled and spat and swore with vigor and venomousness quite surprising in that diminutive bulk. Dastardly, dishonorable, disgraceful, disreputable, sulking cowardly. Asked why he had not mentioned his Marconi purchases in the House of Commons, Lloyd George gave two answers. One, there was no time on a Friday afternoon. Two, I could not get up and take time when two ministers had already spoken. Why had he not asked to be heard sooner by the committee? He understood that Sir Rufus had expressed the willingness of all the accused ministers to be heard. Like Sir Rufus, Lloyd George mentioned that he had lost money on his Marconi transactions. The obstruction within the committee continued to the end. The question had arisen whether Godfrey had had the right to sell his shares at his own price or for his own profit. He had sold a considerable number of shares to relations and friends at one pound, one shilling, three pence, where shares were sold to the general public at three pounds, five shillings. Others of his shares he sold on the stock exchange at varying prices, all high. But were the shares his or did they belong to the English company? If they were his he was entitled to sacrifice vast profits on some by selling at cost to his relations and to take solid profits on others by selling at what he could get in the open market. But if he was simply selling as an agent of the company he had no right to make so fantastic a present of one lot of shares and was bound to hand over to the company that is made on the others. He told the committee that the 500,000 shares had been sold to him outright but that he passed on 46,000 pounds of profits to the company. He said that a record of this sale of 500,000 shares to him would be found in the minutes of the English company. The books of the company were inspected and it was found that no such minute existed. Lord Robert Cecil naturally wished to recall Jeffrey Isaacs to explain the discrepancy between his statements and his records. The usual 8 to 6 majority decided that there was no need to recall Godfrey. It looked rather as if the shares Godfrey had sold to Harry and Harry to Rufus at such favorable prices belonged to and should have been sold for the profit of the company. On May 7th the committee concluded its hearings and its members were marshalling their ideas for the report but there was one fact for them and the public still to learn. Early in the morning the committee recalled to hear about it. A London stockbroker had absconded. A trustee was appointed to handle his affairs and it was discovered that the fleeing stockbroker had acted for the still absent Ellybank had indeed bought American Marconi's Forum a total of 3,000 and as it later appeared these had been bought for the funds of the Liberal Party. The comment of the times was totally unnecessary difficulty which has been placed in the way of getting at the truth seems moderate enough. End of Chapter 19, Part 1 Chapter 19, Part 2 of Gilbert Keith Chesterton This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Dick Bourgeois Doyle Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Maisie Ward Chapter 19, Part 2 Marconi 3 The Trial of Cecil Chesterton Meanwhile, the new witness had not been neglecting its self-appointed task of striking at every point that looked vulnerable. On January 9th, 1913 an article appeared attacking the city record of Mr. Godfrey Isaacs and listing the bankrupt companies, there were some of which he had been a promoter or a director. Some more ardent spirit in the new witness office sent sandwichmen to parade up and down in front of Godfrey Isaacs own office bearing a placard announcing his ghastly failures. Cecil Chesterton said later that he had not ordered this to be done but he refused to disclaim responsibility. The placard was the last straw. Godfrey solicitors wrote to Cecil saying Godfrey would prosecute unless Cecil promised to make no further statement reflecting on his honor till both had given evidence before the parliamentary committee. Cecil replied, I am pleased to hear that your client Mr. Godfrey Isaacs proposes to bring an action against me. And in the new witness February 27th, 1913 he wrote, we are up against a very big thing. You cannot have the honor and the fun of attacking wealthy and powerfully privileged interests without the cost. We have counted the cost. We counted it long ago. We think a good enough. Much more than good enough. The case came on at the Old Bailey on May 27th. It is worth recalling the exact position at this time. The parliamentary committee had concluded its hearings three weeks earlier and was now preparing its report. Cecil Chesterton had not given evidence before it for though he had frequently demanded to be summoned. When at last the summons came, he excused himself on the plea of ill health and the further plea that he wished to reserve his evidence for his own trial. The Matan case had been heard a couple of months earlier. Everything that was ever to be known about ministerial dealings in Marconi's was by now known. Except for Ellybank's separate purchase on behalf of the party funds, which was made public just at the end of the trial. Sir Edward Carson and F.E. Smith were again teamed as in the Matan case. The charge was criminal libel. Cecil insisted on facing the charge alone. His various contributors had joined in the attack but Cecil would not give the names of the authors of unsigned articles and took full responsibility as editor. Carson's opening speech for the prosecution divided the six alleged libels under two main heads. One set said Carson charged Godfrey Isaacs with being a corrupt man who induced his corrupt brother to use his influence with the corrupt Samuel to get a corrupt contract entered into. The opening attack under this head has already been quoted. Later attacks did not diminish in violence. The swindler rather theft impudent and bare faced as it is. When Samuel was caught with his hand in the till or Isaacs if you prefer to put it that way. The second set charged that Godfrey Isaacs had had transactions with various companies which had the attorney general not been his brother would have got him prosecuted. There is the same violence here. This is not the first time in the Marconi affair that we find these two gentlemen Godfrey and Rufus swindling and again the files at Somerset House of the Isaacs companies cry out for vengeance on the man who created them, who manipulated them who filled them with his own creatures who worked them solely for his own ends and who sought to get rid of some of them when they had served his purpose by casting the expense of burial on the public purse. There is no need to describe the case in detail. On the charges concerned with the contract and ministerial corruption the same witnesses with the notable exception of Lloyd George gave much the same evidence as before the parliamentary committee very little that was new emerged. The contract was worse than ever after Cecil Chesterton's counsel, Ernest Wild had examined witnesses but Mr. Justice Fillemore insisted that it had nothing to do with the case whether the contract was badly drawn or in provident but indeed all this discussion of the contract was given an air of unreality by the extraordinary line that Chesterton defense took. It distinguished between the two sets of charges offering to justify the second concerning Godfrey Isaac's business record but claiming that the first set brought accusation of corruption not against Godfrey but against Rufus and Herbert Samuel who were not the prosecutors. It was an impossible position to say that ministers were fraudulently giving a fraudulent contract to Godfrey Isaac's but that this did not mean that he was in the fraud. Cecil showed up unhappily under cross examination on this matter but from the point of view of his whole campaign worse was to follow. For Cecil withdrew the charges of corruption he had leveled at the ministers. Here are extracts from the relevant sections of the cross examination by Sir Edward Carson. And do you now accuse him Godfrey Isaac's of any abominable business I mean in relation to obtaining the contract? Cecil Chesterton yes certainly I now accuse Mr. Isaac's of very abominable conduct between 7th and July 19th. Carson do you accuse the postmaster general of dishonesty or corruption? C. Chesterton what I accused the postmaster general of was of having given a contract which was a by word for laxity and thereby laying himself open reasonably to the suspicion that he was conferring a favor on Mr. Godfrey Isaac's because he was the attorney general's brother. Carson I must repeat my question. Do you accuse the postmaster general of anything dishonest or dishonorable? C. Chesterton after the postmaster's denials on oath I must leave the question. I will not accuse him of perjury. Carson and therefore you do not accuse him of anything dishonest or dishonorable. After some further questioning judge that is evasion. Do you or do you not accuse him? C. Chesterton I have said no. Later C. Chesterton my idea at the time was that Sir Rufus Isaac's had influenced Mr. Samuel to benefit Godfrey Isaac's. Carson you have not that opinion now? C. Chesterton Sir Rufus has denied it on oath and I accepted his denial. Cecil still insisted that though the ministers had not been corrupted what had come to light about Godfrey's offer of American Marconi shares to his brother showed that Godfrey had tried to corrupt them. Godfrey could not have enjoyed the case very much. There was much emphasis on his concealment of clause 10 allowing the government to terminate at any time and Sir Alexander King secretary to the post office admitted that Godfrey Isaac's had asked that it be kept quiet but this was not among the accusations Cecil had leveled at him. In his summing up Mr. Justice Fillimore indicated the possibility that the shares Godfrey had so gaily sold belong not to himself but to the English Marconi company merely adding that this question was not relevant to the present case. Further the record of his company failures was rather ghastly. Here is a section of his cross-examination as to the companies he had been connected with before the Marconi company. Remember that there were 20 of them. Wild. I'm trying to discover a success. Judge. It is not an imputation against the man that he has been a failure. Wild. Here are cases after cases of failure. Isaac's. That is my misfortune. Judge. You might as well cross-examine any speculative widow. Wild. A speculative widow would not be concerned in the management. Wild. Here is a point to one success except Marconi in the whole of your career. Isaac's. In the companies. Wild. Yes. Isaac's. Complete success? No. I should not call any one of them a complete success but it may say that each of them was an endeavor to develop something new. But Carson had made the point in his opening speech that though Godfrey Isaac's had been connected with so many failures he had not by the shareholders of anything dishonorable. In his closing speech he pointed out that not one single city man had been brought forward to say that he had been deceived to the extent of one sixpence by the representations of Mr. Isaac's. And indeed the evidence called by the defense in this present case, however suspicious it may have made some of his actions appear did not establish beyond doubt any actual illegality. The trial ended on June 9th. The judge summed up heavily against Cecil Chesterton. The jury was out for only 40 minutes. The verdict was guilty. Cecil Chesterton says the times smiled and waved his hand to friends and relations who sat beside the dock. The judge preached him a solemn little homily and then imposed a fine of 100 pounds and costs. The Chesterton's and all who stood with them held that so mild to fine instead of a prison sentence for one who had been found guilty of criminal libel on so large a scale was in itself a moral victory. It is a great relief to us ran the first editorial in the new witness after the conclusion of the trial to have our hands free. We have long desired to restate our whole case about the Marconi disgrace and view of the facts that are now before us in the English people. When we began our attack we were striking at something very powerful and very dangerous. We were striking at it in the dark. The politicians saw to that. Our defense is that if we had not ventured to strike in the dark, we and the people of England should be in the dark still. There can be no question of Cecil Chesterton's courage, but he may have exaggerated a little in saying that if the new witness had not struck in the dark the nation would still be in the dark. Parliament had already refused to approve the contract without proper discussion and the outlook was attacking vigorously before the first new witness attack. And there are grave drawbacks to the making of charges in the dark which later have to be withdrawn. Cecil's withdrawal of his charges against the ministers and his failure to substantiate his charges against Godfrey's company record may have done more to hinder than help the cause of clean government. But his courage remains. And if one had to choose, one prefers the immoderate man who said more than he knew to the careful man who said so much less. Gilbert, giving evidence of the trial, had said that he envied his brother the dignity of his present position and with the Isaac's brothers in mind one sees the point. Four. Afterthoughts Four days after the verdict against Cecil Chesterton, the Parliamentary Committee produced its report. There had been a draft report somewhat critical of the Marconi buying ministers by the Chairman, Sir Albert Spicer and another considerably more critical by Lord Robert Cecil. Lord Robert's report said that Rufus Isaacs had committed grave impropriety in making an advantageous purchase of shares upon advice and information not yet fully available to the public. By doing so, he placed himself, however unwittingly, in a position in which his private interests or sense of obligation might easily have been in conflict with his public duty. Of his silence in the House, Lord Robert said, we regard that reticence as a grave error of judgment and as wanting in frankness and in respect for the House of Commons. Upon this, Rufus Isaacs' son comments, the vehemence of this language was not calculated to command the draft to the majority of the committee. Viemence seems hardly the word, but at any rate, the committee did not adopt either Lord Robert's report or Sir Albert Spicer's. By the usual party vote of 8-6, it adopted a report prepared by Mr. Falconer, one of the two whom Rufus Isaacs had approached privately, which simply took the line that the ministers had acted in good faith and refrained from criticizing them. Parliament debated the matter a few days later on a conservative motion that this House regrets the transactions of certain of its ministers and the shares of the Marconi Company of America and of frankness displayed by ministers and their communications on the subject to the House. Rufus Isaac's son speaks of the certain ruin of his father's career if by some unpredictable misadventure the motion had been carried. It would indeed have had to be an unpredictable misadventure for the voting was on the strictest party lines, which means that the House did not express its real opinion at all. The motion was defeated by Rufus Isaacs in 1968. Lloyd George and Rufus Isaacs expressed regret for any indiscretion there might have been in their actions. Rufus explained that he would not have bought the shares if I had thought that men could be so suspicious of any action of mine. In the debate, the leader of the opposition, Arthur Balfour, somewhat disdainfully refused to make political capital out of the business. Lloyd George and Isaacs were loudly cheered by their own party, though whether they have bought American Marconis or for having concealed the purchase from the House, there is now no means of discovering. At any rate, their careers were not damaged. The one went on to become Lord Chief Justice of England and later Vice-Roy of India. The other became Prime Minister during the war of 1914 to 1918. One question arising from the episode is whether it meant what Cecil Chesterton and Bellock thought it meant in the party politics, or something entirely different. They seem throughout to have assumed that their thesis of collusion between the party leaders was proved by this scandal. It seems to me quite as easy to make the case that it was disproved. A conservative first raises the matter by inconvenient questions in the House. A group of young conservatives pay the costs of Cecil Chesterton's defense. When a parliamentary committee is appointed to inquire into the alleged corruption, the story of every session becomes one of a conservative minority trying hard to ferret out the truth and a ministerial majority determined to prevent their succeeding. Finally, the leading conservative commissioner, Lord Robert Cecil, issues a restrained but most damning report which is, as a matter of course, rejected by the liberal majority. A conservative MP told me he thought the great mistake made was that it had all been made too much of a party discussion. Unless you already disbelieved quite violently in the existence of the two parties, this would certainly be the effect upon you of reading the report of the commission's sessions. And all that can be said against it is the fact that Mr. Balfour did in the House of Commons utter a conventional form of words which, as has been said, really amounted to a refusal to make political capital out of the affair. I do not say, for I do not pretend to know, the correct interpretation is certainly the obvious one. Douglas Gerald in a brilliant article on Bellach treats his theory of the party system as a false one and maintains that he mistook for collusion that degree of cooperation that alone could enable a country to be governed at all under a party system. A certain continuity must be preserved if, in the old phrase, the king's government is to be carried on. But such continuity did not spell a corrupt collusion. If, at this distance of time, such a view can be held by a man of Mr. Gerald's ability, it could certainly be held at the time by the majority. And it may be that the continual assumption of an unproved fact got in the way in the fight against more obvious evil, Heller Bellach, and the counter-revolution in For Heller Bellach. For a bound up with this question is another. The eyewitness seems so near success and yet never quite succeeded. Might it have done so had it been founded with a single eye to creative opportunity to the attack on the servile state and the building of some small beginning of an alternative. GK's weekly was a slight improvement from that point of view for it did create the Distributist League. But both papers I think had from their inception a divided purpose that made failure almost inevitable. The fight against corruption, which had been placed equal with the fight for property and liberty at the start of the eyewitness, is a noble aim. But like the other, it is a life work. To do it, a man must have time to span verifying rumors or exploding them, following up clues, patiently waiting on events. I began to read the files with an assumption of the accuracy of the claims of the eye and new witness as to its own achievement in all this. But when the dates and facts in the funny case had been tabulated for me chronologically, I began to wonder. Again and again, the editor stated that the new witness had been first to unearth the Marconi matter. But it hadn't. As we have seen, questions in the house and attacks in other papers had preceded their first mention of the subject. So too, the statement that the Marconi Affair had proved how little Englishman cared about corruption seemed almost absurd when one read not only the conservative, but also the liberal comment of the time. Political corruption is the Achilles heel of liberalism, said the outstanding liberal editor, while Hugh O'Donnell in the new witness paraphrased the whale of the Cadbury papers. Tis the voice of the Coco, I hear it exclaim, O Jordy, dear Jordy, don't do it again. Just how scandalous was the Marconi scandal? At this distance of time, it is difficult to arrive at any clear view. There are two main problems, the contract and the purchase of American Marconis. The contract seems very definitely to have been unduly favorable to the company. Clauses were so badly drawn that they had to be supplemented by letters which had no legal effect. Documents were lost, other tenders misinterpreted, other systems perhaps not fully examined, the report of a subcommittee shelved, Godfrey Isaacs allowed to issue a misleading report without correction from the post office. Godfrey may spell corruption, but it need not. No one familiar with the workings of government department is likely to be surprised at any amount of muddle and incompetence. Matters are forgotten and then in the effort to make up for lost time important steps are simply omitted. Officials are pigheaded and unreasonable. And as to lost documents, what are the minister's dealings and shares? Godfrey may have been using Rufus to purchase ministerial documents. He could hardly have done so on a comparatively small scale of the dealings known to us. The few thousand involved could not have meant an enormous amount to Rufus. He had, it is true, begun his career on the stock exchange, found himself insolvent and had been hammered. But he had gone on to make large sums at the bar. Up to 30,000 pounds a year and his salary as attorney general was 20,000 a year. There may of course have been far heavier purchases than we know about. The piece by piece emergence of what we do know gives us no confidence that all the pieces ever emerged. We have only the word of the two brothers for most of the story. And one comes to feel that their word has no great meaning. But, allowing for all that, it is possible that Godfrey may have wanted Rufus to have the American shares out of family affection. Of the shares Godfrey personally disposed of, a very large number went to relations and close friends. Mother, sisters, his wife's relations, who certainly could not help him to get his contract through Parliament. If this, the most charitable interpretation is also the true one, Rufus and his political friends acted with considerable impropriety and snatching at this opportunity of quick and easy money. The rest of the story is of their efforts to prevent this impropriety being discovered. Had they mentioned it openly in Parliament on October 11th, the matter might have ended there, but they lacked the nerve. The occasion passed and nothing remained, especially for Rufus but evasion, shiftiness, half-truth passing as whole-truth, the farce of indignant virtue, a performance which left him not a shred of dignity and not to have made it unthinkable that he should ever again be given public office. The perfect word on the whole episode was uttered not by either Gilbert or Cecil Chesterton or by any of their friends but by Rudyard Kipling. The case had meant a great deal to him. On June 15th, a conservative neighbour of Kipling wrote to Gilbert, I cannot let the days pass without writing to congratulate you and your brother on the result of the Isaac's trial. I do feel, as many thousands of English people must feel, that the new witness is fighting on the side of English nationalism and that is our common battle. My neighbour Rudyard Kipling has followed every phase of the fight with interest of such a kind that it almost precluded his thinking of anything else at all and when he gets hold of the new witness, my copy I never can get it back again. You see, however much we have all disagreed, do disagree, we are all in the same boat about a lot of things of the first rank. We can't afford to differ just now, if we do agree. It's all too serious. When Isaac's was appointed Viceroy of India, Kipling wrote the poem, Once cometh thou, Ghazi, so reverent to behold in scarlet and in ermine and chain of England's gold from following after Naman to tell him all as well whereby my zeal has made me a judge in Israel. Well done, well done, Ghazi, stretch forth thy ready hand thou barely scraped from judgment take oath to judge the land unsuede by gift of money or privy bribe, more base, or knowledge which is profit in any marketplace. Search out and probe, Ghazi, as thou of all canst try the truthful, well-weight answer that tells the black or lie, the loud, uneasy virtue the anger feigned at will to overbear a witness and make the court keep still. Take order now, Ghazi, that no man talk aside in secret with the judges the while his case is tried lest he should show them reason to keep the matter hid and subtly lead the questions away from what he did. Thou mirror of uprightness what ails thee at thy vows what means the risen whiteness of skin between thy brows the boils that shine in burl the sores that slough and bleed the leprosy of Naman O thee and all thy seed stand up, stand up, Ghazi robe and go, Ghazi judge in Israel a leper white as snow. As the Times leading article of June 19th 1913 put it a man is not blamed for being splashed with mud he is commiserated but if he has stepped into a puddle which he might easily have avoided we say that it is his own fault if he protests that he did not know it was a puddle we say that he ought to know better but if he says that it was well, quite a clean puddle then we judge him deficient in the sense of cleanliness and the British public like their public men to have a very nice sense of cleanliness that fundamentally was what troubled Gilbert Chesterton then and for the rest of his life he was not himself an investigator of political scandals in that field he trusted his brother and on this particular matter Cecil had certainly said more than he knew and possibly more than was true but it did not take an expert to know that some of the men involved in the Marconi case had no very nice sense of cleanliness and these men were going to be dominant in the councils of England and to represent England in the face of the world for a long time to come End of chapter 19