The Annual Register 1914: A Review of Public Events at Home and Abroad for the Year 1914Anonymous
History
The Annual Register 1914: A Review of Public Events at Home and Abroad for the Year 1914
Anonymous
History, Modern; History, Modern -- Periodicals; World War, 1914-1918
Among subsequent speakers, Mr. Brace (Lab., _Glamorgan, S._) said
that if the King had interfered the Labour party must have made his
action an issue at the next elections. If the two paragraphs had been
maintained, that party would have overthrown the Government. Mr.
Bonar Law contested the charge made against the Opposition leaders
by the First Lord of the Admiralty, and, reading out Lord Morley's
explanation, declared that every member of the Cabinet was in the same
position as the War Minister. Eventually the third reading was carried
by 329 to 251.
In the House of Lords, also, the resignations and Lord Morley's
position were discussed, but without much fresh enlightenment. Lord
Morley stated that when the War Minister showed him the two paragraphs,
he did not perceive, nor did he yet perceive, that they differed in
spirit or substance from the preceding paragraphs. Further explanations
were promised for next day, and, incidentally, Earl Roberts appealed to
Peers and people to end the mischievous and dangerous assertions that
the Army was being made the tool of a party. No man alive, he said,
could seduce the Army in that way. Next day, in reply to a vehement
attack on the Government by Earl Curzon of Kedleston, Lord Morley
explained that Colonel Seely had resigned the second time in order
that it might not appear that any Minister had made a bargain, and he
himself had had no share in sending the letter as a reply to General
Gough's request, of which he was unaware. Sir Edward Grey and the
Prime Minister had taken the same view of the paragraphs, when taken
with the rest of the letter, as himself. Notable speeches were made
by Lord Methuen--to the effect that the Army would do its duty in any
case--and by Earl Loreburn, who appealed to all parties to facilitate
a settlement. The Marquess of Lansdowne thought the new Army order
would not make matters clearer, and the Marquess of Crewe mentioned
that the Royal Irish Constabulary, and Afridis in Indian frontier wars,
were never asked to serve against men of their own country or race
respectively.
Amid all these shocks it was a comparatively trifling matter that the
Arms proclamation was invalidated for a time by the result of Hunter
_v._ Coleman, an action brought by a firm of Belfast gunsmiths at
the Belfast Assizes against the Collector of Customs of the port for
detaining arms consigned to the plaintiffs at Hamburg on December 18,
1913. The sympathies of the jury were obviously with the plaintiffs,
and the Attorney-General described the trial as a "political farce."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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