Jimmy's Paradox

The traditional knowledge of British subjects that their civil servants are incorruptible was at stake last week as a verdict was handed down on the recent case in which part of Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain's new Budget leaked out in advance to speculators who made small killings by insuring with Lloyd's Underwriters against new and higher taxes (TIME, May 4 et seq.). Because the secrets thus disclosed in criminal violation of the Official Secrets Act were known to every Cabinet member, to high Treasury civil servants and even to Government printers, Britons last week awaited earnestly the findings of Parliament's Special Tribunal of Inquiry over which presided testy and upright Justice Sir Samuel Lowry Porter.

Reported the Tribunal: "We have seen Sir Maurice Hankey [Secretary to the Cabinet], Sir Warren Fisher [head of the Civil Service] and Sir Maurice Gwyer [Parliamentary Counsel to the Treasury] in the witness box. We unhesitatingly accept their evidence as regards themselves, their subordinates, and those engaged in the civil service generally, including the printers who are employed on this and other work of confidential nature.

"We find no shred of evidence to suggest that any of the persons mentioned or described was even in communication with any of those who effected insurance, and that no leakage from such a source was suggested. "The same observations apply to all Cabinet Ministers save J. H. Thomas and to all those persons to whom information as to the Budget was supplied before its publication to the House of Commons."

To London's press this finding was grand news. "It is impossible to read the cold and fearless words of the report without a feeling of pride, surely not unpardonable, in our public and parliamentary traditions," cried the Labor Daily Herald. "For comparison," boomed the Conservative Daily Express, "you need to [recall] the Stavisky Scandal in France and the United States Teapot Dome oil scandals, which dragged on for years." In editorials of modest understatement, Fleet Street reminded everyone that only six weeks had elapsed since the Budget leaked-- another record for British Justice, swift & sure.

"Poor Old Jim." In exonerating everyone except J. H. Thomas the verdict, although otherwise wholly a source of satisfaction, last week moved many British hearts to pity. It was recalled that Leaker Thomas had been an intimate friend of the late King George, and as the London Times said: "Let no one withhold a measure of sympathy from Thomas himself and the family concerned.... In the crisis of 1931 he [Thomas] was one of only two or three men who stood firm in the midst of political chaos and made possible the National Government which staved off disaster."

Since the Empire and even the Crown thus owe much to "Jimmy" Thomas, the jovial ex-engine wiper who until a few weeks ago was Secretary of State for the Colonies, news of how he received the verdict was snapped up eagerly by millions. The verdict's 24 printed pages were handed to Mr. Thomas in the little home of his son-in-law, and as Jimmy pawed through them frantically, with shaking hand, Son Leslie Thomas poured a precautionary whiskey-soda. Soon Father Thomas came to the line in which his son, a broker who had placed some of the speculative insurance, was specifically exonerated of having had any guilty knowledge of what his father and his clients knew. "Thank God!" cried grey Mr. Thomas to faithful Mrs. Thomas, who married him when his pay was less than $6 per week. "Thank God, our Les is exonerated!"

Jimmy read on to the place where it appeared that every British official possibly concerned was innocent except himself. Ashen-faced as he reached for the whiskey-soda, James Henry Thomas said huskily: "It's a cruel verdict! Cruel, that's what it is!"

So general was British desire to make Jimmy feel better that soon he could read in the Conservative Daily Telegraph that he is "generous, warm-hearted and loyal. . . . None can deny his gift of moral courage." Prosecution of Jimmy for the criminal offense of having violated the Official Secrets Act was considered possible but scarcely likely. "The obvious difficulty," declared the Evening Standard "would be the absence of proof that he [Thomas] did in fact make any disclosures. The Tribunal has published its finding on the circumstantial evidence before it, but that finding would not rank as evidence in a court of law." The Stavisky Scandal, if not the Teapot Dome affair, ended in heavy jail sentences, and last week British speculators who had profited from the Budget leak were not altogether sure that they will go scot free. Jimmy Thomas' intimate friend Adman Alfred Bates, who cleaned up over $50,000, was so nervous that last week he hastily returned the whole sum to Lloyd's. Stronger-nerved, Jimmy's other big-winning friend Sir Alfred Butt kept all last week, and insurance underwriters guessed the Budget leak has cost them a total of some $500,000.

This week Mr. Thomas and Sir Alfred face the House of Commons (of which they remained members last week) and King Edward had not exercised the royal prerogative of striking Jimmy off the list of His Majesty's Privy Councillors. Resignations and even impeachments were possible, but the temper of British public opinion in the Thomas case was closely gauged by veteran New York Times Correspondent Ferdinand Kuhn Jr. "The people are feeling happier today," he cabled from London. "This sordid incident in British politics has turned out to be one of the finest advertisements for British Justice. It is another of those paradoxes which the foreigner meets constantly in attempting to study the British people and their ways."

Newfoundlands. Meanwhile coaxing efforts were made by London's New Statesman & Nation to have notice taken of a previous British leak which has never been probed. Coaxed the New Statesman & Nation: "Questions might well be asked in Commons regarding allegations in the American paper TIME, which often contains information overlooked in this country. A leakage occurred in the British Government's guarantee of Newfoundland bonds three years ago. The allegation was neatly cut with scissors from copies of TIME available on the bookstalls of this country, but had it been made and names mentioned it should have been investigated."

Possibly this was never done because in 1933, as in 1936, the evidence was largely, if not wholly, circumstantial. It happened that Newfoundland bonds were underwritten by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom and, of course, soared in price. It also happened that blocks of such bonds were largely bought just before the rise by British speculators, whose keen sense of values soon enabled them to make a greater killing in Newfoundlands in 1933 than in this year's rather pip-squeak Budget leak.

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