The Beck Inquiry Commission has been taking evidence in public
during the past week. As was certain from the character of its members, the Commission is evidently going to probe the matter to the very bottom, and the whole truth will be elicited, however painful it may prove to the officials, administrative and judicial, who blundered with such tragic consequences to Mr. Adolf Beck. We cannot attempt to summarise in detail the week's evidence, but it goes to show that, owing partly to accident, partly to the stupidity of officials and to their incapacity to judge of the effects of their actions, and partly also, we fear, to a stubborn refusal to admit, even to themselves, that their system could be anything
but perfect, even when it was obviously working unfairly, Mr. Beck had withheld from him that essential justice which we have been in the habit of boasting is the prerogative of every accused man in England. He was in effect punished, not on the ground upon which he was nominally condemned, but on one on which, owing to the " red-tape " in which he and his accusers were alike entangled, he was forbidden to defend himself. As Mr. Beck said of his own situation, "I was like a fly in a spider's web."
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