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 £2 in those days) before the negotiations with the Government were started and had resold them at 200 francs (about £8) 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":*
[* New Witness, Vol. I, p. 655.]
I am so swift to seize affronts,
My spirit is so high,
Whoever has insulted me
Some foreigner must die.
I brought a libel action,
For the Times had called me "thief,"
Against a paper in Bordeaux,
A paper called Le Juif.
The Nation called me "cannibal"
I could not let it pass—
I got a retractation
From a journal in Alsace.
And when The Morning Post raked up
Some murders I'd devised,
A Polish organ of finance
At once apologised.
I know the charges varied much;
At times, I am afraid
The Frankfurt Frank withdrew a charge
The Outlook had not made.
And what the true injustice
Of the Standard's words had been,
Was not correctly altered
In the Young Turk's Magazine.