A PLEA FOR JUSTICE.
IF justice is more than a technical phrase of the Law Courts, more than a mere word of art, the Secretary for Scotland should listen to the petition of Mr: Cecil Aylmer
Cameron, formerly a Lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery. In the spring of 1911 Mr. Cameron found himself in what
was perhaps the most appallingly difficult situation in which a human being could be placed. He and his wife were about to be tried for defrauding the underwriters of Lloyd's in regard to a policy of insurance on a pearl neckla.a. Mr. Cameron was not in reality, though lie was no doubt in law, a principal in the crime alleged. He had acted through- out at the suggestion of his wife, had placed implicit belief in her statements, and it was on the truth of those statements that both prisoners relied for their defence. Shortly before the trial began Mr. Cameron's friends convinced him that his wife's story was entirely false. In such circumstances how was he to act ? Whether wisely or unwisely from the worldly point of view, he acted the part of a very loyal and a very chivalrous man. He refused to save him- self at the expense of his wife. If be had changed his line of defence, and admitted that her statements were false in fact, the case against him would at once have broken down, and he would have been acquitted. Bitt by saving himself be would have deprived his wife of all possibility of escape. Accordingly he instructed the lawyers concerned to do nothing which would prejudice her chance of acquittal. Therefore he was not called as a witness, and in order to save his wife bore the burden of her false and fantastic plea of defence. In spite of his self-sacrifice, however, he did not save her; but, whether his course of action was well judged or not, it was unquestion- ably adopted, not in his own personal interests, but in order if possible to protect his wife. In the end both husband and wife were convicted and each sentenced to three years' penal servitude. The wife was only in prison for a few months. Mr. Cameron served a term of two years and was then released.
Mr. Cameron makes no complaint against his im- prisonment. He took his course of action with open eyes and knowing what was before him. His wife soon after her release made a full confession of her crime—a confession which shows that Mr. Cameron was in no way implicated, but was at every step deceived by her false state- ments. All that he now asks for is a reconsideration of his case in order that he may rehabilitate his honour. He wants to submit himself to cross-examination so that the full grounds of his action may be made clear and placed on record. He does not for one moment allege that he has been unfairly or unjustly treated by the law. He knows that, as he could not speak out during the trial without injuring his wife, he could expect no other fate than that which overtook him. In fine, he does not want redress, for be does not assert that he was wronged at the trial. All that he asks for is a chance to save his good name and the honour of his family. Unfortunately there is no Court of Criminal Appeal in Scotland which can secure him a rehearing of his case. Rightly, however, be asks that technical objections of this kind may be set aside, and that in some way or other the Scottish Office may, say by the appointment of a Special Commission or Committee, investigate his case and give him a chance to be heard. Hitherto the Secretary for Scotland has felt compelled to refuse the petition. Here is the only injury of which Mr. Cameron complains. He is now endeavouring to gain support for his petition by placing all the documents before the public and before Parliament.
A friend of Mr. Cameron's, or, rather, a stranger whose desire for justice has made him interest himself in Mr. Cameron's case, and has made him espouse it with the
warmth, generosity, and loyalty of a close relation in blood, Sir Herbert Raphael, M.P., has sent a copy of Mr. Cameron's petition to every Member of Parlia- ment. The course in question is adopted because, as Sir Herbert Raphael points out in his covering letter, now that the Secretary for Scotland has refused to grant an inquiry, the only means left of raising the matter is on the discussion of the Scottish Estimates in the House of Commons. Sir Herbert Raphael makes an excellent point when he notes that the facts disclosed in the petition reveal an entirely new case, and therefore one which cannot be objected to as merely going over old ground. Mrs. Cameron's confession of the way in which she deceived her husband allows Mr. Cameron for the first time to put in his real defence. Sir Herbert Raphael asks members of the House of Commons to read, the petition and to help him when the matter comes up for discussion. We most sincerely hope that they will read it. If they do, we are certain that it will affect the vast majority in two ways. (1) They will be deeply moved by the story contained in the petition. (2) They will agree that no technicalities ought to stand in the way of doing justice to a man who acted as noble, as chivalrous, and as self- sacrificing a part as did Mr. Cameron.
Let us add one word of warning. The impulse in many men after reading the petition and the extraordinary list of persons of all kinds—in the Army, the Navy, the Law and the Church, and among Peers and Members of Parliament—who have investigated the case for themselves and who support Mr. Cameron, will be to say that he needs no further vindication. The grey book containing the petition, they will declare, places his character beyond all reach of aspersion, and is, in fact, a testimonial to character to which very few of us could attain. Whether we consider the story by itself, the names of the petitioners, or the extraordinary testimonials given by Mr. Cameron's old commanding officer and brothers-in-arms, we can reach but one decision—namely, that not only is he a man who has performed a great and notable act of chivalry, but that he was throughout a man of blameless life—the kind of man who specially impresses his contemporaries by his depth and clearness of character. Any man, indeed, might he excused for saying that Mr. Cameron is foolish to attempt to place his reputation higher than the petition places it.
Yet those who argue thus would be wrong. We fully sympathize with Mr. Cameron in refusing to be content with testimonials of which in other circumstances a man would be proud, and in insisting that his case shall go before some impartial tribunal, the harder and the more rigid the better—a tribunal which shall sift his conduct to the very last grain, and pronounce upon it, not in terms of kindness and friendship, but of the strictest impartiality. He wants something more than sympathy or pity. He wants, and he is right to want, justice in the shape of an absolutely truthful version of what occurred. He wants to have it .put on record how it came about that he served a period of two years' imprisonment.
Let us say once more that it is idle for the legal pedant to assert that Mr. Cameron only got his deserts, and that he cannot have it both ways, cannot be the chivalrous martyr without paying the penalty. He admits this to the full. He does not argue that he did not get his deserts. What he wants, and what he has a right to ask for, is the power to let the world know exactly why he acted as he did, being convinced that when he has told the whole story no one will feel that he has disgraced his name.
Of the petition we shall attempt no analysis, so sure are we that those who will take the trouble to read it must conic to the conclusions which we have stated above. We do desire, however, to place on record in our columns the extraordinarily moving testimonial by Colonel Dutton Burrard, who had been Mr. Cameron's superior officer. No man or woman, we venture to say, will read his words without being touched by the depth of the tragedy therein set forth :—
"6 Grand Avenue Mansions, Hove, 201/./iff. Lieutenant Cecil Aylmer Cameron joined the 96th Battery R.F.A.. then in process of formation under my command, in 1901 (I think), from the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He served immediately under me till I left the Service in july, 1903. During nearly the whole of that time I was unmarried, and lived in the Mess with my three Subalterns on terms of intimate and =dial association. Lieutenant Cameron was an exceptionally
keen and efficient Subaltern—proud, honourable, and chivalrous- & perfect gentleman in thought and deed, and ono in whom I had the profoundest trust and confidence.
Had I been asked my opinion of him at that time, I would unhesitatingly have predicted for him a fine soldier's career. He was so earnest, thorough. hard-working, so full of seal, activity, and enthusiasm, and withal possessed of a personality so courteous and charming that it was a pleasure for me, his CO., to live with him. I had every opportunity of gauging him ass fond during these years. I was with him daily, both on and off parade; and, after my marriage and retirement from the Serviee, he remained a dear and intimate friend of both my wife and self—up, indeed, to the present-day. There exists no one, outside of my immediate family circle, whose inner self, whose soul, I know so intimately as I know his, and I say unhesitatingly and emphatically that his connivance, direct or indirect, with the attempted fraud, for which he was tried and condemned, is a shear impossibility. He wee. and is and always will be, the soul of honour. Nothing could ever shake me from that belief. He is where he is now solely because of his exaggerated sense of chivalrous honour, which forbade him even to attempt to extricate himself, for fear lest such attempt might help to incriminate his erring wife.
I do not write this in any vain hope of influencing the Authorities in his favour. As a soldier, I know that nothing I write is evidence, either for or against him. Bat, in my capacity of Commanding Officer, I have been asked to record my opinion of his character and, in doing so, I should fail in my duty, both to him and myself, were I not to emphasise with all the force at my command my unalterable conviction—based on knowledge, not only of the man himself, but of the concrete evidence in respect to his case—that if ever one human being has suffered martyrdom for another's sins, my late Subaltern, Lieutenant C. A. Cameron, is that unhappy person—not through any direct miscarriage of justice, but solely through his own chivalrous error, whereby he defeated the legitimate ends of justice, and brought upon his own unoffending head the crushing weight of an unjust condemnation. W. Dwrrox BIJIMAIRD, Colonel."
He who could make another man write of him in these terms is no ordinary man. The words have caught some- thing of the nobility, the high-mindedness, and the knightly virtue of him with whom they deal.
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