Foreign News: Snatch & War Risks

Correctly foreseeing that the Japanese Government would not pay a brass farthing in indemnity for the machine-gunning of British Ambassador to China Sir Hughe Montgomery (“Snatch”) Knatchbull-Hugessen (TIME, Sept. 6), the British Government did not ask any money. This was “manifestly unfair” to good old “Snatch,” his many ruling class friends have been influentially murmuring in London ever since, but an old imperial precedent is in favor of the foreign nation which is to blame always paying the indemnity. For example the assassination in Egypt of Sir Lee Oliver Fitzmaurice Stack cost Egyptians exactly $2,300,000 (TIME. Dec. 1, 1924). In the painful dilemma of 1937, Britain’s Cabinet last week announced that the House of Commons will be asked to vote £5,000 ($25,000) to “Snatch.” Fully convalescent. Sir Hughe Montgomery Knatchbull-Hugessen left Shanghai for a holiday to be spent in such South Sea pleasure spots as Bali.

Simultaneously, last week Lloyd’s and all other consequential British underwriters stopped writing “war risk” policies not only for China and Spain but for anywhere on earth. In a joint manifesto the British insurers said they think they have made “a substantial contribution to the cause of world peace,” explained that property owners unable to take out war risk policies will be forced to start “working for peace,” concluded: “The wide radius of action of modern aircraft has made the area of destruction almost illimitable. Incendiary bombs have increased enormously the potential damage to property. Writing of war risk insurance on land has become in fact little more than a gamble, which plays no part in insurance, where rates are based on scientific application of the law of averages as ascertained through experience.”