Fresh Harvest

Last week British liberals in the House of Commons continued their sniping at British munitions makers, and in particular at the House of Vickers. Was the Government aware, they wanted to know, that while Dr. Hernando Siles was President of Bolivia (1926-30) he had obtained an important loan from Vickers-Armstrongs on condition that all the money go for war materials in Britain?

Week before the Rev. James Wilson, onetime rector of Sneyd. near Burslem, rose at a meeting of the Clergy Pensions

Institution in London. He had been pained to discover that a portion of the Church pension fund came from $50,000 worth of Vickers, Ltd. stock. No less pained were other clerics the following day when the stock was ordered sold. Slender white-haired Douglas Vickers, director general of the firm that bears his name, was far too busy last week to pay attention to all this. Other arms tycoons have their hobbies: postage stamps, hybrid tea roses, Louis Seize furniture, after-dinner speeches about peace. Making money is the hobby of Director General Vickers, who is also a very active partner in the London brokerage house of Vickers D'Acosta. Fourteen months ago a munitions scandal shook Rumania. Army officers were charged with having accepted bribes to throw arms contracts to the great Czecho-slovak firm of Skoda. One of them committed suicide, others went to jail and the Skoda contracts were canceled. Not trusting any of his salesmen, Douglas Vickers was in Bucharest last week angling for this rich Rumanian prize. At week's end his London friends had the impression that the Rumanian contracts were safely in his pocket.

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