23 SEPTEMBER 1916, Page 3

eases of bribery and swindling tried before Mr. Justice Low

have laid bare a truly shocking system of corruption in the Army Clothing Department. Viewers of goods supplied have been convicted of tampering with invoices and of regularly receiving bribes from contractors ; and not the least unpleasant part of the facts is that, while the viewers have been very properly sentenced to hard labour, the guilty contractors have been able to appear as witnesses against them. As the Judge remaiked, though the contractors left the Court free men, they left it disgraced men. Another very sinister fact is that all the swindling and corruption was possible in spite of an extraordinarily prolonged or complicated system of checking. All the apparatus of red-tape achieved less than nothing in the way of efficient supervision. When all has been said, the fundamental cause of such disgraceful cheating is that the men who are placed in positions of trust are not paid salaries that command the services of educated men of honour.