SIR HAROLD BEAUCHAMP'S SPEECH

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21198, 23 June 1934, Page 19

SIR HAROLD BEAUCHAMP'S SPEECH

TO TUB EDITOR OF THE TRESS. Sir, —Last week some of us were putting in our claim to the rank of crank and getting it recognised too, but who would have thought it was so near the annual meeting when bankers get it back on their tormentors. The chairman's address, as usual, showed no slacking in impressiveness and ponderosity, but this time there almost seemed to be a kindlier, more grandmotherly tone in it, with just a suspicion that the old cocksureness was sickening. \lt is only when bankers chide their S critics so sorrowfully that one thinks of any connexion between them and cranks. They remind one of the little tale, as old as the banks themselves, though I believe it has never been told at the annual meeting. A parson approaches a lost dog with a group of boys around it, and asks what they are going to do with it. One of the boys tells him they are going to give the dog to the boy who can tell the biggest lie, whereupon the parson sadly "Naughty boys, when I was your age I never told lies." That settled the argument: with one breath they shouted, " 'And 'im the dawg." The bankers may believe they are almost as orthodox as the parson, but they, too, are not getting credit for it; in fact, with the world's flood of production and the banker's unswerving confidence in his puny, hidebound finance, is it any wonder if the whole of crankdom should rush out to proclaim him the King of Cranks, and ask him to accept, not merely the cake, but the whole biscuit factory?— Yours, etc., f AS June 22, 1934. i