THE VALUE OF PUBLICITY.
WE cannot imagine a more striking instance of how publicity acts as an antiseptic, and enables the most awkward wounds to heal themselves, than the naval case which has just been tried in the King's Bench Division. It would have been very easy, and, indeed, most natural, for the Admiralty to say that the action for libel which Captain Kemp proposed to bring against Mr. Yexley and the proprietors and publishers of the lower-deck paper, the Fleet, involved so many delicate questions of discipline, and would raise such a storm of bitterness between officers and men, that the interests of the Service required that the whole business should be kept out of a public Court. We do not suggest that any pressure whatever was put upon Captain Kemp to induce him not to bring the action; but, if he was quietly allowed to bring it (as no doubt he had a full legal right to do, whatever protests his superiors might have made) without any attempt at restraint being practised, we can only say that the Board of Admiralty have the advantage of possessing very steady nerves. The discipline of the Army and Navy is a thing by itself. No one can fail to see that the discussion of highly technical and esoteric customs by necessarily inexpert persons in a Law Court might lead to all hinds of mischief in misdirecting public opinion and bringing the Navy into wholly undeserved disrepute. We have tried to imagine what we should have done ourselves if we had had the power to decide whether the case should be allowed to come into Court, and we confess that our inclination would have been to try to prevent it. But we now see that in doing so we should have underrated the power of publicity to bring about the doing of substantial justice, and to win through to a settlement of the most satisfactory sort, even in a highly technical matter. Mr. Yexley may feel that he has a grievance —may feel, at all events, that the damages of 23,000 which have to be paid to Captain Kemp for the publication of
unsupported stories about his competence to maintain disci- pline and goodwill in his ship are too heavy. But the effect on the lower deck and on the public can only be of one kind. They will all feel that the verdict of twelve British jurymen is good enough; that there is no possibility there of prejudice, of making martyrs in the interests of the Service, or of high- handed action by a Department responsible to no one in particular, and always tempted to ride off on the grave and exceptional nature of the trust reposed in it, even if questions be asked.
Think what would probably have happened if this affair bad been managed in the German manner. To begin with, it is certain that the high officials would never have allowed the case to come near a civil Court. They would have placed an absolute prohibition on both sides to the dispute. Nor would they probably have even allowed the comparative publicity of a Court-Martial, though they would have found no particular difficulty in calling a retired petty officer who had returned to civil life before a Court-Martial. It is much more likely that they would have hushed up the whole affair. Copies of the paper containing the libel would have been called in, bought up, and destroyed. But this would not have ended the trouble. The trouble—the really insidious and undermining trouble— would then have been only at its beginning. A good deal would leak out. The Socialists would ask questions in the Reichstag, and the Junkers and the National Liberals would shout out angry interruptions about the sacredness of the Navy. It would be said that the Government, afraid to face the ques- tion, had run away from it. The officers of the Navy would feel that they were not being supported before the public, and the seamen, for their part, would feel that they were being held down as the dumb and defenceless pawns of the bureau- cratic will. If that would be the inevitable result in Germany, something only a few degrees less injurious to the Service would have happened in England if the Kemp-Yexley case had been made a Departmental affair. Both sides would have believed that they were martyrized. And the worst part of the business would have been that, while the Admiralty would not really have made martyrs, they would have earned the universal reputation of doing so. We are sure that, if they had had the power to punish Mr. Yexley, no Board of Admiralty would have dared to inflict quite such a heavy penalty as has been adjudged by Mr. Justice Avory's Court. As it is, that penalty is exacted without a suggestion, either in the Navy or in the country, that prejudice or a code of antediluvian severity has been at work. Mr. Yexley wished the case to come into Court, and represented that he was fighting the cause of the lower deck. The answer to that pretension comes, not from officials fear- fully responsible for that precious thing, the discipline of the Navy, but from twelve impartial countrymen of Mr. Yexley's who had no more reason to favour Captain Kemp than to refuse to believe that seamen very often are made to suffer by the caprices or want of judgment of a single superior officer.
It is a lesson in the uses of publicity to look back and recognize how all fears for the repute and dignity of the Navy were brought to naught by the event. The circumstances were exceedingly delicate, and our rough British legal method notoriously means a high average or standard of justice rather than perfect justice in cams of unusual complexity and subtlety. Yet the two sets of conditions were brought together, and the result is surprising in its success. No harm is done to the Service, whatever may be thought of the injury to the pockets of the defendants. We do not wish to say anything in general in criticism of Mr. Yexley's work, exaggerated though his writing often is All fair- minded persons, we think, will admit that in a great many respects his very industrious research into the affairs of the Navy has been the cause of most wholesome improvements. In 1912 be was consulted by Mr. Churchill, and be drafted regulations for the revised pay of the men. His influence can be traced in the victualling reforms, in the keeping of
records of punishments, and in other respects. But in his treatment of Captain Kemp he made a great mistake ; he tried to justify it, and he has received the lesson of his life as to
how the Navy can be served wisely and how unwisely. We are not sorry that all this has happened. It is salutary for everyone to have this proof that special laws are not, after all, so desirable for special institutions as is often supposed. The Common Law stands even this strain and comes out
triumphant. The publicity of an ordinary Law Court supplies the beat safety-valve ever invented for nearly all the purposes of life. As the old special pleader said, "There's nothing like a Trial-at-bar."
Previous page
