i8 
Land & Water 
July 4, 1918 
If all seems correct he initials— or, rather, endorses— the 
accounts: "I hereby certify that this account has been 
examined under my directions and is correct. 1 his is the 
usual procedure— at all events, in peace times— tor all 
Departments, and. as stated, even now for the smaller 
Ministries. The accounts are sent in monthly, or, in the 
rase of certain Departments such as the Foreign Office at 
rather longer intervals, and they are then returned, when 
passed, to the senders. 
In the case of the larger Departments, the existing pro- 
cedure is rather different. In all these cases the Auditor- 
Qeneral has one of his representatives permanently at work 
in each of these Departments, carrying on pari passu the 
task of investigation with the labours of the members of the 
Accountancy Branch, which each Department deabng in 
hundreds of millions has established since the war started. 
As they work on lines of friendly and helpful co-operation, 
the representative of the Auditor-General is thus able to 
check everything as the expenditure is incurred, and while 
the system accounts for the detection of the mistakes to 
which publicity has been given it also guarantees that no 
others of a similar nature— yet undetected— can possibly 
exist Indeed, the large Departments are, it is only fair to 
state now run on quite up-to-date lines; and thus, for 
instance in regard to the Ministry of Munitions there is at 
the Audit Department a notable readiness to pay 
tribute to the work of Sir Worthington Evans These 
representatives of the Auditor-General report direct to 
their own chief, so that the results of their labours 
when he has considered them, may receive his olhcial 
imprimatur. , r c- tj 
There is, of course, another aspect of the work of Sir Henry 
Gibson. He has to ensure that all payments to individuals 
for personal services are according ,to Treasury regulation. 
This is specially necessary in these days, when Ministries 
have a great amount of latitude in regard to staffs and 
salaries. He has the right of surcharging when excessive 
payments have been made, and unless there are very special 
reasons, such as the over-riding order of a strong-willed 
Minister, he can withhold payments. In that case he will 
endorse the outlay, but report the matter to the Public 
Accounts Committee of the House of Commons, to which, as 
the supreme authority, all his findings are sent. In that 
case, the Minister will have to appear and justify his action ; 
and if he cannot, he will have to introduce a proposal to 
make the payment in the next Estimates of his Department, 
when the point can be discussed in the debate. As a rule. 
Members of the House are so ignorant of finanoe, so little in 
touch with systems of payment, that the items slip through 
with little or no comment. 
The Controller and Auditor-General has no responsibility 
either for policy or the preparation of the accounts on 
which he is called to report. His Department is the key- 
stone of national finance. It is only to be regretted that it is 
so short-handed. If we had placed it at the very start of 
the war on a footing commensurate with the vast expendi- 
ture of national money we should have saved millions to 
the nation by the immediate compulsory introduction of 
up to-date methods of accounting. But in those days 
Ministers were autocratic and resentful of detailed criticism. 
One would much like to know the private views of the Auditor- 
General on the waste of public money as a result not of 
policy — that is another matter — but as an outcome of 
insufficiency of financial control. 
Whales in War : By Alfred Bigland, M.P. 
I ST AND looking at an Admiralty chart of South 
Georgia, a group of islands in the South Atlantic 
ocean, in the same parallel, but to the east, of Terra 
del Fuego. A Norwegian captain, reaching over my 
shoulder, points out the channels amongst the numer- 
ous islands. For the captain, each of these tiny dots on the 
map mean something : for him each tiny dot stands for 
some conflict with Nature, some struggle out of which he 
has come victorious— perhaps some grave where a friend is 
taking his last repose, 
"Here," he said, pointing to a spot on the chart, 1 and 
my shipmates had the closest call I ever experienced. We 
had arnved very early for the summer fishing, and were 
pushing our way to our land station ; icebergs were still 
drifting, and, as we came to this narrow channel, a great 
i> berg was moving slowly down towards a high chff, and I saw 
it was a case of turning back and going a hundred miles 
round, or taking the risk of being caught between the berg 
and the cUff. 1 chose the latter, but rather misjudged the 
distance and the wind pressure on the berg. I thought for 
a moment we were about to be crushed like a walnut between 
the perpendicular mass of ice and the cliff. I had to run the 
bow of the steamer (a vessel of 6,00Q tons) hard against the 
edge of the iceberg, and grazing its side, I just managed to 
squeeze through into the open water beyond. 
"Almost immediately the huge mass of ice came floating 
majestically up against the cliff, closing the channel. Only 
a few minutes to spare ! I shuddered to think what the fate 
of the old liner would have been had she been caught in that 
trap. 
"Here," again he said, pointing to a circular formation of 
the hills, "is an extinct volcano, the only ice-free tract of 
land. In this place for five months in every year a busy 
scene of industrial activity is to be observed when the whale 
fishing is in full swing. Here is the land station. Every 
steamer brings its load of stores, empty barrels, coal, and 
men ; there is not an animal or tree that can live through 
the awful winter, so we carry all our supphes. 
"My ship," he proceeded to inform me, "is a modern 
factory ship fitted with steam digesters for reducing the 
blubber on board, and tanks to hold the oil — other com- 
panies have their digesters on land, and have to fill all their 
oil into barrels and carry home their catch in these barrels, 
which, economically, is not such a profitable method. ' 
• *•••♦ 
This introduction presents a sketch of one of the great 
whaling stations of the Antarctic, as it was given to me over 
a cigar in the captain's cabin of the Benguela, lying at 
Birkenhead dock. I had recently been appointed Assistant 
Director of the Propellants Branch of the Ministry of Muni- 
tions, and my special work was to see that His Majesty's 
Government had ample supplies of material to produce 
glycerine used in the manufacture of cordite for our Navy 
and Army. In order to perform this service with satisfaction 
to myself and due success to the carrying on of the great 
struggle we are embarked upon, I had cast greedy eyes upon 
the supply of whale oil. 
Wherefore I prosecuted further inquiries, and was 
informed that no one was permitted to engage in this whale- 
fishing in the Antarctic without a licence from the British 
Government, which hcence regulated the number of craft 
engaged by each company in the actual killing of the whales, 
and imposed restrictions safeguarding the hmits of the catch 
and other conditions which, if not obeyed, rendered the 
holder of the Ucence hable to have it cancelled. 
This power, it seems, came into our hands many years ago, 
when whaUng in the Arctic Ocean became unprofitable and 
the industry centred itself in the Antarctic. It was suggested 
to the existing powers that be, in view of the fact that no 
one could enter this trade without a land station, and that 
the British had all the land contiguous to the Antarctic, in 
order to preserve the whales from extinction it was advisable 
to control the trade by a system of licences. This was 
adopted. I then ascertained that two British and several 
Norwegian firms had very large capital invested in the enter- 
prise, that it was so profitable others were waiting for licences, 
and each knew that if he failed to comply with the conditions 
as set forth on his hcence, he would lose it, and that another 
firm would take his place. This constituted the very real 
strength of the control. 
Armed with this valuable information, I saw that a further 
control would be possible during the war, and that as it was 
impossible for these vessels to get stores and coal from any 
other country than ours, it would not be unreasonable to add 
a further condition to the licence, namely, that in considera- 
tion of our supplying coal and stores the whole catch Must be 
brought to and sold in Great Britain during the period of the 
war.' This was happily arranged, with the result that in 1916 
no less a quantity than 640,000 barrels of this valuable oil 
was brought to this country and purchased by the Propellants 
Department of the Ministry of Munirions ; this country 
thereby became possessed of nearly 10,000 tons of glycerine 
at a price far below that at which any other country in the 
world was able to buy. 
It must not be thought that the producers of this whale oil 
— principally Norwegian companies — were not fairly treated 
in the matter of the pVice fixed by the Ministry of Munitions. 
[Continued on page 20.) 
