$50,666.50 Wrong

Herbert Hoover had barely unpacked his trunks in the White House when Prohibition's most spectacular international incident arose to embarrass him. Off the coast of Louisiana U. S. Coast Guard cutters chased the rum-running Canadian schooner I'm Alone 200 miles out to sea, there shelled and sank her (TIME, April 1, 1929). One seaman, a French citizen, was killed. British and Canadian newspapers roared with pain. U. S. Wets bubbled over in frothy indignation. Terse memoranda flew between London, Ottawa and Washington. Strenuously the U. S. State Department sought to defend the act's legality.

The incident was referred for settlement to two commissioners of arbitration appointed under the U. S.-British liquor treaty of 1924. One was precise, deliberate Associate Justice Willis Van Devanter of the U. S. Supreme Court. The other was the Canadian Supreme Court's bland, blue-eyed, brilliant Justice Lyman Poore Duff, who relaxes for sleep with calculus problems and long corresponded in Greek with the late Lord Haldane. Years passed. Justice Duff was upped to Chief Justice of Canada. Justice Van Devanter saw burgeon in the U. S. a New Deal. Prohibition passed and the I'm Alone, rotting at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, was forgotten by all save the aging commissioners.

Last week in Washington they returned their decision. Though Canadian-registered, the ship, they reported, had been owned by a New York liquor syndicate. Waived, therefore, was Canada's claim for $386,803.18 damages for ship & cargo. But the deliberate sinking of the ship had been justified neither by treaty nor international law. Therefore the U. S. Government should pay the ship's captain & crew sums totaling $25,666.50. To the Canadian Government it should deliver a confession of guilt, an apology, and, "as a material amend in respect of the wrong," the sum of $25,000.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.