NORTHCLIFFE “INTERVIEW”.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 October 1921, Page 3

NORTHCLIFFE “INTERVIEW”.

A SERIES OF BLUNDERS. (From a London Correspondent.) London, August 5. It was quite like Lloyd George to drag the King his * quarrel with ■ Lord Northclifl’e. No other Prime Min- • ister of modern times would dream of .doing such a thing. What happened? Tn the Scotch edition of the Daily Mail i —not in the English, nor in its assojciate the Times —appeared what purported to be a report of an interview that Lord Northclifl’e was said to have given in New York to the New York Times, and in which a quite impossible conversation between the King and Lloyd George on the subject of Ireland was alleged to have been reproduced by Northclifl’e. With this as his sole .justification, Lloyd George hurried off to the King and obtained from him a message to the House of Commons, denying that such a conversation had taken* place. Imagine Balfour, Asquith, Rosebery, Campbell-Bannerman, Salisbury or even the not over-scrupulous Beaconsfield, doing anything of the kind! It was open to Lloyd George, of course, to deny in Parliament what he supposed Lord Northcliffe had said, had he thought it necessary. W-hy did he not do so? Probably because he knows that with the bulk of people his denial carries no weight, although he is Prime Minister of England; whereas a word from His Majesty the King is enough for all, even when that word is said under the constitutional compulsion of official advice. For the King must act on the advice of Ministers or take the attitude which

amounts to asking Parliament to give him fresii ones. The cable has told you that there was no interview with Lord Northcliffe; that there - was one with the Times editor, Mr. Steed, who was with Northclifl’e in New York; that in this Mr. Steed used some illustrative language without the slightest intention of presenting it as a statement of a conversation which had actually taken place; that a reporter who is not versed i.’i British constitutionalism reproduced it as something said to have actually occurred; and that the headlines to the interview were so tricky that they be-

guiled one of NorthcliiTe’s own men into thinking that it was a statement by his lordship himself. So —to use one of the late Sir George Reid’s favorite figures—was the fat put into the fire. All very unfortunate. A mere series of blunders.