"THE MAN WHO BROKE THE BANK."

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18402, 8 June 1925, Page 10

"THE MAN WHO BROKE THE BANK."

In tho April number of "English Life" Sir Basil Thomson, K. 0.8. (late Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department, New Scotland Yard), contributes an interesting article on "The man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo." In the course of tho article the writer sa'ys:— ' ' ~"I have always counted it a privilege'to have known Wells, the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, and became the hero of the evening papers and of a popular song. If his brief summer, of popularity had bloomed in these days lie would have accepted an offer from a music hall or a film company, and have made more money than he did by breaking the bank or than he lost by futile speculation. He might oven have escaped two long terms of imprisonment. As it was, his shortlived triumph was by proceedings for fraud, and he disappeared from public v view on tho wrong side of the prison gate. Granted that a number of poor people loßt money by.his specious promises, it was tho motive that will be considered by a tribunal higher than that of the Old Bailey, and his motive was to make them all rich as well as himself. He was a pure-souled optimist. When he entered on the game, in which he broke the bank he felt sure he was. going to win. For him all .that glittered was'gold; his mind was the philosopher's stone of the alchemists, which transmuted into gold all the baser metals; and so it was that while he was busy losing his own fortune he was busy losing that of others as well. Was his prospectus full of lying statements? Not at all. He believed every one of them while he was writing it. If I had met him while he was still free, and had had money to invest, and he had held me with his glittering eye and discoursed upon his latest project for making money, .he would have defrauded - even me, who has a fairly wide acquaintance among fraudulent company promoters, so great is the power of a man who believes in himself. The pity was that hard economic facts will not yield to the personal touch, and it "was these that brought his gilded schemes to naught."