Volume 146 — REVERSIBLE RHETORIC.
Reading edition
(Being the unsigned MS., evidently of a leading article, picked up in Fleet Street last week. What the finder wants to know is—which side is it arguing for?)
The Plot that Failed.
Out of the welter of mendacity, evasions and intrigue, for a parallel to which the records of this or indeed of any civilised country might be searched in vain, one fact has at last emerged clear and indisputable. The nation will learn this morning, with what feelings it is only too easy to conjecture, that a great party, a party which, despite its many political blunders, has at least a record for honourable if mistaken statesmanship in the past, has now stooped to the final and abysmal folly. Disguise the fact with what specious rhetoric they may, the truth remains that our opponents have deliberately endeavoured to tamper with a great national possession, and to make the British Army a tool in the game of party.
Incredible, nay unthinkable, as such a situation would have been till lately, who is now to deny it? If any doubt still remained, surely the venomous outpourings of those journals which support and encourage the machinations of "honourable gentlemen"—alas that the phrase should henceforth have to be in quotation marks!—on the opposite side of the House must by now have dispelled it. Beaten to their last ditch, and discredited even in that, it is now evident that the conspirators had determined to stake all upon one final throw. Fortunately the very desperateness of the plot has proved its undoing, and from the tremulous lips of the perpetrators themselves comes to-day a froth of vituperation and rancorous abuse that is the surest confession of abject failure.
Happily, however, there is a brighter side to the picture; signs are not wanting—and each hour, we are sure, will strengthen them—that moderate men in the ranks of our opponents are beginning to share our own indignation and dismay. Let but this spirit find its outlet and victory is ours. We say it in no petty strain of party triumph, but the day of reckoning can obviously no longer be delayed. A gang of wholly reckless and unscrupulous political adventurers have sown the dragon's teeth in the wind; let the whole nation see to it that they are now forced to reap armed men in the whirlwind!
AN ECHO OF SHOW SUNDAY.
(Proving that a humorist is never allowed to be serious.)
Visitor (after studying well-known humorous artist's classical Academy picture). "Delightfully comic. Tell me, what is the joke to this one?"
"Many a man whose courage would not respond to the spur of some huge burglar would die rather than be beaten by a wretched little collar stud."—Times.
The only burglar we have ever met was (luckily) in the Infantry.