TILE LLOYD GEORGE-ASQUITH CORRESPONDENCE.

(To me EDITOR or run " BpaCnTOR."3

expected to find in your issue of the 15th inst. a complete

retractation of, and apology for, the article in your previous issue an " The Lloyd George-Asquith Correspondence." There is neither apology nor retraetation, but instead thereof a laborious explanation of how " the character of the article in the Atlantic Monthly was necessarily misunderstood by us and others who relied upon the summary in the Weekly Dispatch," and were impressed by the claim of the Erening News that the " summary" in question was " a complete vindication of Mr. Lloyd George's action at that time which led to his succession to the Premiership." After your attack on Mr. Lloyd George on the 8th inst., the Daily News published other extracts from the article in the Atlantic Monthly, which extracts it, in turn, boldly displayed under the headline "Mr. Asquith Vindicated."

It looks at first sight a singular circumstance that some extracts from one and the same article can be announced as " vindication " of Mr. Lloyd George and others as a " vindica- tion " of Mr. Asquith. You call it "one of the most complete

illustrations" you "can call to mind of how the cable may ba used to mislead." If you had added: "persons who are anxious to he misled, since any opportunity of attacking Mr. Lloyd George is welcomed with heartfelt gratitude," you would have been nearer the truth.

The extracts from the Atlantic Monthly given in the Weekly Dispatch gave you the opportunity of arguing that the American writer had been supplied by an " underling " with onfidential material to write in support of his " chief." With an air of judicial detachment quite foreign from your real purpose—which was to fling mud at Mr. Lloyd George, any stud. so long as some of it would stick—you supposed a "detective" to set to work on the Weekly Dispatch article in order to deduce, by the inimitable methods of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, which "chief" it was whose "underling" had dis- graced all the traditions of British statesmanship by handing confidential documents to a foreign writer. Your " detective." cs your readers quite well understood, had an easy took in front of him, since there was no doubt as to which " chief " he was destined and desired to discover. On evidence which a British jury would have laughed at, he came "to the con- elusion that the correspondence was circulated in the interest of Mr. Lloyd George "—the verdict he had to secure on pain of instant dismissal from the force.

Last Saturday you had to face the music, and this is how you did it

" We came to this conclusion because the correspondence "- I ask your renders to note this word "correspondence" par- tieularly—" in the form in which we read it was rather eretlitable to Mr. Lloyd George, or at all events might easily have been eonsidered so by his agents and special supporters. The Daily News on Monday—a week after the partial publica- tion of the correspondence "—the italics are mine—" completes the story. Front what the Daily News publishes it is now perfectly evident that the revelation. in the Atlantic Monthly were not ;nude at all in the interests of Mr. Lloyd George. On the contrary, they were very derogatory to Mr. Lloyd George."

In other words, " partial " publication of the " correspond- ence " in the Weekly Dispatch having " vindicated " Mr. Lloyd George and led the Spectator's "detective" to find that an "underling" of Mr. Lloyd George was behind the article, the Dully News by giving complete details shows that the article was " very derogatory to Mr. Lloyd George "—at which point the interest of the Spectator in the "underlings" an 1 "chiefs" responsible for the Atlantic Monthly's article suddenly and unaccountably ceases. Is its "detective" no longer available?

The use of the words " partial " and "correspondence" is wholly misleading. The Daily News does not extract from the Atlantic Monthly a single additional letter or document. When the Evening News claimed that the article "vindicated" Mr. Lloyd George, it relied exclusively on the only thing that matters--the documents. When the Daily News claimed that the article " vindicated " Mr. Asquith, it relied elelltSirely sit the only thing that does not matter—the narrative of :al anonymous writer who IS quite obviously bitterly hostile to

Mr. Lloyd George. Your readers will judge for themselves which " vindication " is the more cogent and reliable.

The inclusion by the writer in the Atlantic Monthly of the Memorandum on Rumania, which, you still repeat, was your

etief reason for tracing the treachery to an " underling " of Mr. Lloyd George, does not in any case require any such explanation, since the subject of Rumania is prominently dealt with in Mr. Lloyd George's letter to Mr. Asquith on December

4th, 1918, and as the writer had the Memorandum by him lie was fair enough to Mein& it. Moreover, like many of Mr. Lloyd George's opponents here, he may be an out-and-out " Westerner," and so be unable to see it as what it really is—

a fine, yet only typical, instance of the Prime Minister's insight.

Having been shown to be completely wrong in your conclusion of the Sth inst. that an "unscrupulous underling " of Mr.

Lloyd George was responsible for disclosing the correspondence

to the Atlantic Monthly, you console yourself on the 15th by asserting that it had previously been disclosed to the Manchester Guardian, and that you "must attribute the dis-

honournble act to some underling who believed himself to be serving Mr. Lloyd George's cause." Your readers will of

course realize that you have no other and no better evidence in support of this opinion, and I cannot refrain from expressing my surprise that the Spectator, instead of apologizing for one charge which it has to admit was unfounded, should attempt to justify itself by making another.

One final remark. It is the letters only that count, not suspicion, as to "underlings" and the acrid comments of ill- informed or uninformed journalists; and you rightly point out that Mr. Lloyd George wanted the letters published at the time, and urged Mr. Asquith to consent to publication. You add :— " The fact that such publication would have been a confession of the weakness of the machinery for directing the war, and would have caused consternation here, was no doubt one of Mr. Asquith's reasons for resigning."

I think that we can leave to historians the taek of searching for " rindieations," but if your readers remain curious on this matter I commend this sentence to their careful consideration.

Since writing the above, the whole question of responsibility for the article in the Atlantic Monthly has been settled by a letter of its editor, Mr. Ellery Sedvick, to the New York Times of February 15th. He states that the letters were handed to him

"while recently in London by a conspicuous friend and supporter of Mr. Asquith, with the suggestion that it was desirable they should be published in the United States," and that "while Mr. Asquith did not, for obvious reasons, wish to be privy to the disclosures, he was entirely willing that they should be made."

This perfectly frank statement, as your readers will sec, not only disposes of all the arguments of your "detective." but shows that your equally confident declarations as to source from which the Manchester Guardian derived the authority which enabled it to say that the letters as publishei were "correct," must be regarded as completely unestablished and dubious.—I am, Sir, &e., FREDERICK GUEST- 12 Downing Street.

[Captain Guest is, in Jeremy Taylor's phrase, " zealously angry." Perhaps for that reason he has taken the wrong track. Our remarks were not an attack on Mr. Lloyd George except in respect of one matter. We said that he showed himself to be without the instinct of statesmanship when he urged Mr. Asquith to publish alarming secret documents at a critical moment in the war. We retain that opinion. For the rest, we attacked not Mr. Lloyd George but the " underling " who evidently thought he was acting in the interests of Mr. Lloyd George. We have nothing to apologize for because it still seems to us perfectly clear that the betrayal of Cabinet secrete was originally made in this country by some supporter of Mr. Lloyd George. The use mode of the correspondence by the Atlantic Monthly with harsh coon' ments highly derogatory to Mr. Lloyd George was a mere inversion of the original process. We expressly pointed out that both Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Asquith had denied all responsibility for the betrayal, and we said that we believed their denials. Captain Guest is quite wrong in his facts when he says that we "consoled" ourselves on the 15th by asserting that the correspondence "had previously been disclosed to the Manchester Guardian." There was no need for consoling, ourselves by this assertion on the 15th as we had already made the assertion on the 8th (p. 157). If it be true that the betrayal was made by a "conspicuous friend" of Mr. Ascoith, we can only say: "The more shame to the conspicuous friend." Further, we would say that if Mr. Asquith was " entirely willing "—which we doubt—that the disclosure should be mole, he showed a lamentable disregard for the public interest. Captain Guest speaks of the perfectly frank state- ment by the editor of the .4tlantic Monthly, but really no statement could Inc satisfactory that did not give us the name of the culprit. As Captain Guest asks if our detective is still available, we desire to say that he is. The need for him seems to be greater than ever. He would be quite willing to collaborate with Captain Guest, or with any detective appointed by Captain Guest, on condition that the joint effort should be directed, not to heighten party faction between the followers of Mr. Lloyd George and those of Mr. Asquith, but to discover who betrayed Cabinet secrets. Seriously, we think it deplorable that the Coalition Liberal Party Whip should not see that the really grave matter is the outrageous violation of Cabinet custom. If such indecencies became the rule, government would become impossible.—En. Spectator.]