"Truth" of April 14 has a pointed note on the much vexed question of prize money. It says:—
The Navy has become tired of possessing its soul in patience pending the distribution of prize money, and it will find much consolation in the official atement of the receipts and payment in the Admiralty Division of the Supreme Court "in prizes. 'The total amount collected down to the end of March last year was £16,889,507. Of this 26,095,294 has gone in what are called payments, but us there has been no distribution' the word": might as well be used frankly, 'The plain fact is that considerably more than one-third of the naval prize-money has been spent mainly in counsels' fees and other law costs. A Priae. Court ig a necessary institution for determining the validity' of @ capture. But there ought to be some protection for the Service against such a monstrous levy on the funds before the Court, simply for the benefit of lawyers. Now that these gentry have skimmed the cream off the nuillt" perhaps Acrountant-General vill get on with the business of sharing In. the old days there seems to have been none of this legal quibbling over what was or was not a prize. A ship taken was sold up, the money divided among the crew of the vessel that caught her and there was an end of it. In this mealy-mouthed age we seem to have been desperately afraid of duiming the traditional rights of supremacy at sea, with the result of endless prize-court actions. That is all very well for politicians, and justice is a great virtue. But it appears a little less admirable when practised at the expense—this outrageous expense of over six millions sterling—of the men who kept the seas for Britain.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.