Carson: You have not that opinion now?
C. Chesterton: Sir Rufus has denied it on oath and I accepted his denial.
Cecil still insisted that though the Ministers had not been corrupted, what had come to light about Godfrey's offer of American Marconi shares to his brother showed that Godfrey had tried to corrupt them. Godfrey could not have enjoyed the case very much. There was much emphasis on his concealment of Clause 10 (allowing the Government to terminate at any time): and Sir Alexander King, secretary to the Post Office, admitted that Godfrey Isaacs had asked that it be kept quiet: but this was not among the accusations Cecil had levelled at him. In his summing up, Mr. Justice Phillimore indicated the possibility that the shares Godfrey had so gaily sold belonged not to himself but to the English Marconi Company—merely adding that this question was not relevant to the present case. Further the record of his company failures was rather ghastly.
Here is a section of his cross-examination as to the companies he had been connected with before the Marconi Company—remember that there were twenty of them!
Wild: I am trying to discover a success.
Judge: It is not an imputation against a man that he has been a failure.
Wild: Here are cases after cases of failure.
Isaacs: That is my misfortune.
Judge: You might as well cross-examine any speculative widow.
Wild: A speculative widow would not be concerned in the management.