13.
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VIII.
1.
CONCLUSION,
It is because we, J. Barrow and J.T. Wakefield, have felt so keenly the loss which has occurred, and the commitant implications of inefficiency, breach of public trust, and complacency, that we have been at such pains to carry out the investigation on which the foregoing Sections are based, and to record them so carefully. We hope that all the foregoing Sections will help the Committee of Enquiry.
2.
In the consciousness however that even if the Committee and the Hong Kong Government find that the foregoing has been of assistance to them, they are yet faced with the difficulty and invidious task of assessing responsibility nicely, we hereby categorically confess failures on our part, some of which perhaps the Committee and the Government might hesitate to impute to us. In short, we feel that the least we can do is to come 100% clean.
As to J. Barrow
3.
My failures are listed in SS V & VII. In important matters I "failed to spot obvious weakness", "failed to check on this", "took this for granted", and "acquiesced". I realise
how bad this is. In particular, I am unhappy about the moral aspect: there is no doubt that if my general supervision of the accounts had been more efficient, less temptation would have been put on officers of my Department to go crooked.
40
What does not however appear is that, though I pride myself in certain respects on mastery of my job, I know that I am inefficient as to accounts. Pre-war, at Taipo, I managed to keep my head above water by outward observance of the rules (particularly one burnt in on my conscious ness that as soon as my Taipo safe accumulated as much as $2,000, I must then immediately pay the cash into the bank. I never really however mastered. the accounts, and have little doubt that a carefully-planned fraud would have stood a good chance of getting past me.
Post-war,
5.
I have not done as much as I should to impress on my D.0.0. the importance of their accounting duties. I have kept them well up to the mark, I claim, in most aspects of their work, but not on this, partly because of the feeling that I was not a suitable instructor. I don't say that I have positively discouraged them from doing their accounting duties, but I admit negatively having given them little guidance in those duties.
6.
Though it has come tragically late in my service, this has been a lesson to me, which I think I will not forget. Certainly the work involved in delving into the details of my accounting system has been valuable experience which I hope to put to use from now on.
7.
At the same time I have an uneasy feeling that my Department requires, if not permanent professional accounting
In supervision, at least more frequent professional check. particular I must draw attention to the fact that the figure of $34,548.94 is still only believed to be the total sum lost, and I ask that the Accountant General's Department should professionally investigate this point, besides (as is obviously required) sending somebody over to advise on my accounts generally. Though I would be the last to quote General Orders, because it is obvious that the spirit is so much more important than the letter, I must draw attention to the fact that there has been
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