After the most meagre warning and negotiation as to terms
the Cabinet has decided that the properties on the Gold Coast must be returned to the Basel Trading Company. The Directors of the Commonwealth Trust cannot on behalf of the shareholders accept those terms.
We are not told why the matter went up to the Cabinet, and there was an air of mystery when the matter was raised lately in the House of Lords. It is to come up there again, and we hope that there will be some clear explanation of what is going on. The Basel Company was a Swiss Company and yet we now see little reference to this fact, though Mr. Amery mentioned it when, as Under- Secretary of State for the Colonies, he answered a question in the House of Commons in 1919. We suspect that the explanation of the muddle is that in the flush of war the 'Government took over neutral property which it had no .right to take. If this is so, the British tax-payer will probably have to compensate those who were wronged and those who are now to be wronged to right the first :wrong.
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