MERRY MOCK TRIAL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21553, 26 July 1933, Page 13

MERRY MOCK TRIAL

"CONSPIRING" ECONOMISTS "SPREADING MENTAL FOG" LEADING LONDON FIGURES A series of mock trials in aid of King Edward's Hospital Fund for London was hold at the London School of Economics. Four economists were put on tlieir "trial" for conspiring to spread mental fog. The defendants were Sir William Beveridge, Sir Arthur Salter, Professor T. E. Gregory and Mr. Hubert Henderson. The Judgo was Major Walter Elliot, Minister of Agriculture. Mr. Henderson pleaded " Guilty, but not so guilty as the others," while the others stoutly protested their innocence. The audience, empanelled as "the jury," had an excellent entertainment. Mr. Robert Boothby, M.P., who prosecuted, deplored tho absence of another defendant, named Josiah Stamp, who had "broken his bail and escaped to America." Ho also informed tho "Court" that "a dangerous gang of Cambridge economists, known as "J. M. Keynes," were still at large, and ho hoped the Court would condemn "them" in their absence. In referring to them in tho courso of tho proceedings ho would describe them as "Kl, K2, K3" and so on. Thero wero many criminals for whom they could only feel the deepest sympathy, he said. Every timo he went, to the Old Bailey and saw a prisoner in the dock ho said to himself, "There but for the graco of God goes Robert Boothby." But these defendants came under a wholly different category; they were not ordinary men; they wero economists. No 0110 ever became an economist through an uncontrollable impulse. No one, looking at an economist, ever said, "There but for tho graco of God stand I." The Qold Standard To sustain tho charge, Mr. Boothby called two members of the House of Commons, "wretched victims of the economists," and asked the Court to judge by their demeanour and answers the sort of mental state to which they had been reduced. When asked what he knew about the gold standard ono of the witnesses described it as a thing that people went off, just as they went off their heads. Mr. Boothby: And most countries at the moment are off it?— Off both, yes. Mr. Boothby, addressing the "jury," quoted from the writings of tho defendants and of the "various Keynes," and concluded by grouping the lot under tho term-"barrier sweepers." The only remedy for the present state of affairs on which they were all agreed was that they "must sweep away all barriers." Tho Minister of Agriculture had been driven nearly mad by these barriers. He had read Kl, K2, K3 and K4, and nearly all the other economists on the subjects of free trade and tariffs and barrier-sweeping, and had come to the conclusion that he must not pay any heed to them, so he invented a thing called "quantitative regulation." If anything could pull this country out of its present condition, "quantitative regulation" would do it, because it was tho only thing that had been heartily condemned by economists. Sentence Passed Sir Arthur Salter, addressing tho "jury" on his own behalf, suggested that such fog as existed among politicians was a natural failing of members of Parliament, and that matters might have been different had they followed the teaching and advice of economists. Sir William Beveridge declared that mental fog was an inherited and not an acquired characteristic. Ho called 10 witnesses to prove that their minds were perfectly clear, and was about to call all the students of the London School of Economics, when the Judge, with an eye on the clock, intimated his intention of passing sentence. Mr. Boothby said he was prepared to withdraw the charge of conspiracy if he wero assured that there would be a savage sentence. The Judge acquitted Mr. Henderson because he pleaded guilty. He condemned Sir Arthur Salter and Sir William Beveridge to five years unsolitary imprisonment in the House of Commons and ordered Professor Gregory to be deported to Cambridge for life.