On Thursday that most distinguished newspaper, the Man- chester Guardian,
completed one hundred years of existence, and by a happy coincidence Mr. C. P. Scott has served for fifty years as editor of the paper. We offer to the Manchester Guardian and its eminent editor our most hearty congratulations. We need not pretend that we always, or even often, agree with the Manchester Guardian. It seems to us to be possessed of a habit of thought which frequently defeats its aims. Its intensely critical method takes the form of stimulating political friends by finding excuses for foreign enemies. In vital matters this may be very unhelpful. It accounts for the fact that the Manchester Guardian used to make many excuses for Germany, which was a brutal and autocratic power, but few excuses for France, which was, after all, the most liberalising nation on the continent of Europe. In the case of Ireland, again, though of course it condemns assassination, it is, on the whole, less angry with the authors than with the imitators of crime.
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