COMMERCIAL MORALITY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIX, Issue 70, 14 July 1914, Page 4

COMMERCIAL MORALITY.

Writing at the end of May a London correspondent says :—While Sir Thomas Lipton was launhcing the English challenger for the America Cup and telling a distinguished party' of tinheaps of-freak mascots sent to'%im by keen yachtsmen, the Army Canteen case, in which Liptous, Limited, has figured so largely, was drawing to its close at Old Bailey. Amidst such revelations of commerical immorality it is pleasant to be able to say upon the assurance of the Attorney-General that not a shred of evidence connected Sir Thomas Lipton with the charges that were investigated. English peoplehave a habit of talking of Americans as tremendous hustlers. If you bve in London any time you find that the American may “hustle some” by mouth, but the busy Englishman is ahead of him in deed. This element of hustle ,is at the root of the robbery, jobbery, and corruption disclosed in the Army Canteen case. Competition is so severe and secret commissions so rife, that men have lost the old sense of fair and square dealing, and have become not so much immoral as unmoral. To get on they must show big profits for their departments, and to do this they must be constantly finding new customers or increasing their orders. When the first bribe was offered in connection with the Army Canteens there was no organised campaign of corruption behind it. The system grew with the evil it fed on. All of the defendants have been punished ; but the hand of the law fell heaviest on Colonel Whittaker, who has been imprisoned, and who has thus not only forfeited his good name, but his pension, which was his sole means of subsistence. With tears of heartrung distress in his eyes,' he assured fudge Darling that he was an absolutely' innocent man. With all the facts public property'. Colonel Whittaker could not see that he had done wrong. His naive and quite truthful protestation is a startling commentary on present-day English customs of trade.