Colonel Malone, the Member for East Luton, was convicted at
Bow Street on Friday. November 19th, of advocating sedition in his Albert Hall speech of November 7th. Ho was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, but was released on bail pending an appeal. His counsel objected to the taking of proceedings under the Defence of the Realm Act ; it is indeed strange that the Crown did not prosecute under the ordinary law. But counsel's suggestion that the defendant had done no harm because he spoke in hypotheses—" We are out to change the present Constitution,and if it is necessary to save bloodshed and to save atrocities, we shall have to use the lamp-posts or the walls "—was not even plausible. Colonel Malone is an avowed Bolshevik ; as a disciple of Lenin, he believes in "heavy civil war," and he says so in the plainest terms. The community is bound to protect itself against such dangerous persons. Homicidal mania is no subject for a jest.
Previous page
