THE GLADSTONE LEAGUE.
[To THZ EDITOR Or THE "SrzorATos."] SIR,—My attention Las been drawn to a letter written by Mr. Gaymer (Spectator, August 13th) criticising the action of the Gladstone League in granting help to a foreman who after nearly thirty years' service was discharged by his firm, and stating that the recipient in a speech made after receiving the gift said :—" As you all know well, I would not like it to go forth that I was paid off really for political matters. I was paid off because I disobeyed orders especially, nothing more or less." As a member of the Executive of the League who was present, and who presented the purse, I must take exception to the statement made in his letter. Mr. Gaymer has omitted the concluding remark of his late foreman's speech, and thus altered the meaning of his statement. The discharged foreman, after relating the reasons given for his discharge, concluded, according to the somewhat inadequate newspaper report, as follows :—" That was what he was told, and, he added, he did disobey orders to some extent, but he added that politics was at the back of it—because he dared to
be a man of principle and conscience." I may add the alleged disobedience of orders was not wilful, but was due to a mis- understanding. The crowded audience, who were perfectly familiar with the whole circumstances of the case, enthusiasti- cally endorsed the action of the Gladstone League in helping a man who had suffered for his political convictions.—I am, [We publish what a writer in the Eastern Daily Press calls Mr. Hardy's "tardy justification of the promiscuous philan- thropy of the Gladstone League." His amended version of the dismissed foreman's remarks does not shake Mr. Gaymer's statement that the man was dismissed on his own admission for reasons which had nothing to do with politics.—En. Spectator.]
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