THE MARCONI LIBEL CASE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXV, Issue 3954, 10 June 1913, Page 5

THE MARCONI LIBEL CASE.

CHESTERTON FINED £IOO. GIVEN TILL MONDAY TO PAY. [UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION-COPYRIGHT.] LONDON, June 8. In tlio trial at Old Bailey of Cecil Chesterton, editor of the “New Witness.” on the charge of having criminally libelled Mr. Godfrey Isaacs, managing director of the Marconi Company, whom he accused of conspiring with Sir Rufus Isaacs (Attor-ney-General) and Mr. Samuel (Post-master-General) to obtain the Government contract for Imperial wireless stations, Chesterton- was fined £IOO and costs. He was l'eleased on bail until Monday, and then will be imprisoned until lie pays up. Judge Phillimore, in'summing up, said that the English company might have dt c’aim against Marconi and Godfrey Isaacs in connection with the profits of placing American shares on the matket, but that had nothing to do with Chesterton’s libel.

LIBERALISM ADVERSELY AFFECTED. DEBATE IN THE HOUSE URGED. ('Received June 9, 11.40 p.m.) LONDON, June 9. Many comments in the Literal newspapers indicate that the Marconi disclosures are adversely, affecting Liberalism. The. “Chronicle” welcomes the result of the Chesterton trial. The “Daily News” describes the Marconi Committee as the discreditable centre of partisan conflict as offensive to one side as to the other, and says it is high time Parliament insisted (on (receiving the Commit-* tee’s report, and adds: “A frank debate in the House would clear the atmosphere of the poisonous suspicions which political venom has engendered.” The Master Of Elihank is visiting Equador, where he is negotiatiin.g for oil contracts on behalf of Pearsons.

[The articles on which Mr Chesterton was prosecuted appeared in the defendant’s paper, the “New Wit-, ness,” previously known as the “Eye Witness.” In the issue of August 15 the following appeared :—“When Samuel was caught with his hand in the till (or Isaacs, if you prefer to put it that way), the shares naturally slumped.’’ The following appeared in the issue of August 22:—“In the Marconi scandal the politicians have hopelessly passed the limit which is permitted in their own particular department of vice. ...” Another article, published on January 23, contained the following:—“Samuel, the PostmasterGeneral, and his cousins in that city who pulled the wires over Indian silver and Indian ioan, the Amsterdam Jews, with whom their cousins maintained such curious and suspicious secret relations; Isaacs, who qualified by a hammering on the Stock Exchange for the post of Attorney-Gen-eral ; his brother, the chairman of the defaulting St. David’s Gold Mines Company, and the author of the erratic dividends; George, the keeper of the nation’s Exchequer—are all smitten with panic.” In another issue there appeared • this:—-“The files of Somerset House of the Isaac companies cry out for vengeance on the man, who created them, who manipulated them, who filled them with his own creatures, who worked them solely for his own ends, and who sought to get rid of some of them when they had served his purpose by causing the burial of some of them at the public expense.”]