Sir Edward Grey, who spoke at Coldstream on Friday week,
expressed relief and satisfaction that an agreement, at any rate in principle, had been reached between Austria and Turkey. But while he considered that mutual dis- cussions and diplomatic trials were tending to increase confidence among the Powers themselves, he could not allow the gross charges of deliberate malevolence brought against us in Austria to pass without protest. He did not attac'h great importance tp them, but it would be under the mark to call them misrepresentations. "They are sheer inventions; and the harm they de is not so much in the resentment caused hero as in the fact that until they are not only discontinued, but disbelieved in the country of their origin, they create a state of feeling there which is a barrier to cordial relations between the public opinion of the two countrie5,—a barrier which it is not in our power, but only in theirs, to remove. When it is removed it will be seen that no corresponding barrier is being erected here ; for, as far as I have seen, there has been no disposition, at any rate on the part of British newspapers which are widely known and carry weight, to exceed the bounds of fair comment and to embitter the controversy with Austria respecting affairs in the Near East." Sir Edward Grey's plain speaking is all the more effective in view of the habitual moderation of the speaker.
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