NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 104, 27 January 1930, Page 10

NOTES OF THE DAY

Convicted of what Mr. Justice Avory described as “the most appalling frauds that had ever disfigured the commercial reputation of Great Britain,” the principals in the Hatry crash have been sentenced to terms ranging from three to fourteen years’ penal servitude; There have been other great frauds'in British history, but this appears to have been the worst within the last fifty years. The losses involved in this particular case were estimated at 134 millions, with no prospect of a dividend when the wreckage has been cleared up. That is a huge sum, but it is not the most serious item in the indictment against tfie prisoners. It has been the pride of British commercial tradition that a man’s word was as good as his bond. The Hatry frauds involved not only unworthy breaches of faith, but deliberate, criminal forgeries which could not possibly have passed muster had it not been that those who were tricked by them trusted the good faith of the signatories. Business morality in the City of London has received an injury from which it will take some time to recover.

A few months ago there was a conspicuous revival of activity by the League of Nations in its campaign against the drug evil, and it was decided to constitute an Opium Control Board consisting of members who were not representatives of Governments, but private citizens of high integrity and ability. The Board was an experiment, but it would appear that under its encouraging supervision the opium traffickers are likely to have more difficulty than in the past in disposing of the drug in its various forms. The League’s difficulty in the past has been to induce individual Governments to adopt its proposed measures for dealing with the traffic. It is largely by disclosures of the kind reported in a cable message on Saturday that public opinion in the.various countries may be roused to action. Publicity is a powarful weapon in such a campaign.