Service Scandal

The British Minister to China, Sir Miles Wedderburn Lampson, was "censured" last week as a result of sensational investigations at the Foreign Office which crescendoed in the dismissal of Assistant Under Secretary John Duncan Gregory.

No more was alleged by the investigating Civil Service Commission than that the officials implicated had speculated privately in French Francs. The Commission even went so far as to deny positively that Foreign Office information had been made the basis of these speculations. What appeared to be the culprits' real crime was that they had transgressed the unwritten code of honor & respectability of the Civil Service. Mr. Gregory, with a salary of -L-1,200 per year had mysteriously transgressed to the extent of making speculative moves in the aggregate amount of -L-1,000,000. Sir Miles Lampson, the Minister to China, had barely dabbled. Intermediate between these twain were three Foreign Office officials who were disciplined, last week, according to the gravity of their indiscretions.*

British interest was especially roused at the dismissal of Assistant Under Secretary Gregory because he is remembered in connection with the notorious "Zinoviev Letter" which hastened the fall of James Ramsay MacDonald's Labor Cabinet (TIME, Nov. 17, 1924). Secretary Gregory, without informing Prime Minister & Foreign Secretary MacDonald, despatched a protest against the Zinoviev letter to Moscow. When news of this move reached the British public it was accepted as proof of the genuineness of the Zinoviev letter (now generally considered a forgery) and materially helped to sway the country away from Laborite MacDonald.

* 1) St. Clair O'Malley, Counsellor of the Foreign Office was "permitted to resign"; 2) Lieutenant Commander H. F. B. Maxe of the Foreign Office Staff was "severely reprimanded" and deprived of three years seniority; Gerald H. Villiers, lesser official, was "censured."