rs:

'Tis the voice of the Cocoa
I hear it exclaim
O Geordie, dear Geordie
Don't do it again.

Just how scandalous _was_ the Marconi scandal? At this distance of
time it is difficult to arrive at any clear view. There are two main
problems--the contract and the purchase of American Marconis.

The contract seems very definitely to have been unduly favourable to
the Company; clauses were so badly drawn that they had to be
supplemented by letters which had no legal effect; documents were
lost, other tenders misinterpreted, other systems perhaps not fully
examined, the report of a sub-committee shelved, Godfrey Isaacs
allowed to issue a misleading report without correction from the Post
Office. It all may spell corruption: but it need not. No one familiar
with the workings of a Government department is likely to be
surprised at any amount of muddle and incompetence. Matters are
forgotten and then in the effort to make up for lost time important
steps are simply omitted. Officials are pig-headed and unreasonable.
And as to lost documents--

What of the ministers' dealings in shares? Godfrey may have been
using Rufus to purchase ministerial favour. If so, he could hardly
have done so on the comparatively small scale of the dealings known
to us. The few thousand involved could not have meant an enormous
amount to Rufus. He had, it is true, begun his career on the Stock
Exchange, found himself insolvent and been "hammered." But he had
gone on to make large sums at the Bar--up to thirty thousand pounds a
year; and his salary as Attorney-General was twenty thousand a year.

There may, of course, have been far heavier purchases than we know
about: the piece-by-piece emergence of what we do know gives us no
confidence that all the pieces ever emerged. We have only the word of
the two brothers for most of the story and one comes to feel that
their word has no great meaning. But, allowing for all that, it is
possible that Godfrey may have wanted Rufus to have the American
shares out of family affection; of the shares Godfrey personally
disposed of, a very large number went to relations and close
friends--mother, sisters, his wife's relations--who certainly could
not help to get his contract through Parliament. If this, the most
charitable interpretation, is also the true one, Rufus and his
political friends acted with considerable impropriety in snatching at
this opportunity of quick and easy money. The rest of th