For the Cabinet Secretariat, the political crisis of the autumn of 1922 occurred at a time when, along with the Lloyd George ‘system,’ the body had sustained mounting criticism. The Daily Express had swung into action late in the previous year, and in the course of 1922 both the Sunday Express and The Economist had joined the fray. In June the wellinformed Viscount Esher was sufficiently concerned to write to the Prime Minister that ‘Beaverbrook and Co seem in full cry after Hankey and are not easy to whip off.’ He suggested that Lloyd George ask two former premiers, Balfour and Asquith, and the titular leader of the Labour party, Adamson, to discuss with him ‘the future of a Cabinet Secretariat,’ if possible limiting the conversation to ‘the necessity for some such body.’ Apparently nothing came of the suggestion, although it indicates that Esher once again looked with favor upon Hankey's endeavors; only two years earlier, he had written to Tom Jones in a vein which suggested that a less attractive characteristic of the Lloyd George regime had rubbed off on the Cabinet Secretary: ‘When Hankey digs the Secretariat in far deeper than he has at present, it will, as far as its personnel is concerned, disappear with any change of Ministers. The virtue goes out of some men when success touches the hem of their garment. I fear Hankey is one of these.’