The officer on whose conduct the Committee comment most severely is Colonel Morgan, of the Army Service Corps, who was Director of Sales and Director of Supplies. At the conclusion of peace in South Africa there were accumulations of stores sufficient to have victualled and supplied the entire South African Field Force of' some 300,000 mon for upwards of four months. Instead of these stores being gradually used, so far as possible, to supply the forces which wore retained in South: Afric they were sold to speculators at ridioniously low prices, and those same speculators were granted contracts to supply the remaining forces at very high prices. It seems that in many instances the stores were actually never removed from the'army depots, the contractors being paid many thousands of pounds on the difference betwoon ti prices at which they agreed to buy the stores from the army, and the prices at which they agreed to sell them back to the army. That was in the main the system of jobbery and fraud that was carried on but in connection with it there were many subsidiary systems of fraud or jobbery of an equally startling character, especially in regard to rel granted to contractors for stores which were reported to be damaged, ther reports being in some instances demons-trahly false.
A "Continuously Moving Figure."
Perhaps the most lamentable thing in connection with the whole story is the part alleged to have been played in it by @ brother of Colonel Morgan. "Through all this maze of soaming ineptitude," the Committee say, "the figure of Mr. Frank Morgan, the brother of the Director of Supplies, moves vontinuously—the ent of the Mushroom Companies, the salaried servant of favoured firms. He had.come upon the scene int August, 1902, but it is not until the 31st of October that he receives his brother's sanction to appear openly as the engaged servant.of the contractor Meyer. It is" matter of public knowledge now that Mr. F. Morgan's share in the profits arising out of " single sale reached the sum of £613." General Butler has been blamed in some quarters for the somewhat lurid and. theatrical phraseology: of his report,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.