Page:Hints About Investments (1926).pdf/151

 property, the business, the shareholders and themselves; but their excess of virtue lays them open to the charge of putting away hidden reserves, tucking away profits and so forth. Of shareholders, who feel aggrieved on this score, one can only say, as the unwillingly sober sinner said of his completely incapacitated comrade, "I wish I 'ad 'alf 'is complaint."

Imprudent Boards hope for a more favourable opportunity for making fuller provision; fraudulent Boards, which are happily rare, deliberately make provision that they know to be insufficient; and so the amount of the profit that is carried to the balance-sheet is increased at the expense of the efficiency of the business and of the profits of future years, and to the ultimate undoing of the shareholders, and of the directors themselves if they were merely imprudent and in the end we may hope, though it is not safe to bet on it, even if they are fraudulent.

But surely there must be a middle course—a policy that will not write off too much or too little, but will give us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

What is Truth?' quoth jesting Pilate, and paused not for an answer." Who can say what is the strictly correct amount to spend