capable of carrying out the Government's
requirements. But the sub-committee held that as wireless was in a
state of rapid development, it would be better not to be tied to any
one system. And they added that while the nature of the contract
itself was not within their terms of reference, they must not be held
to approve it.

From its examination of the contract, the Committee passed on to
examine journalists and others as to the rumours against Ministers.
And still the Ministers were not called.

On February 12, 1913, L. J. Maxse, Editor of _The National Review_,
was being examined by the Committee. Suddenly he put his finger on
the precise spot. Having expressed surprise at the non-appearance of
Ministers, he went on: "One might have conceived that they would have
appeared at its first sitting clamoring to state in the most
categorical and emphatic manner that neither directly nor indirectly,
in their own names or in other people's names, have they had any
transactions whatsoever, either in London, Dublin, New York,
Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, or any other financial centre, in any
shares in any Marconi Company throughout the negotiations with the
Government. . . ."

"Any shares in any Marconi Company": the direct question was at last
put.

On February 14, just two days later, something very curious happened.
_Le Matin_, a Paris Daily paper, published a story to the effect that
Mr. Maxse had charged that Samuel, Rufus Isaacs and Godfrey Isaacs
had bought shares in the English Marconi Company at 50 francs (about
L2 in those days) before the negotiations with the Government were
started and had resold them at 200 francs (about L8) when the public
learnt that the contract was going through. It was an extraordinary
piece of clumsiness for any paper to have printed such a story:
certainly Mr. Maxse had made no such charge. It was an extraordinary
stroke of luck, if the Ministers wanted to tell their story in Court,
that they should have this kind of clumsy libel to deny. And it is at
least a coincidence that Rufus Isaacs happened, as his son tells us,
to be in Paris when _Le Matin_ printed the story. Samuel and Rufus
Isaacs announced that they would prosecute and that Sir Edward Carson
and F. E. Smith were their counsel. This decision to prosecute a not
very important French newspaper, while taking no such step against
papers in their own country, caused Gilbert Chesterton to write a
"song of Cosmopolitan Courage":*