to strike his flag, may deceive himself, but he does not long succeed in deceiving any one else. The evidence taken before the referee in the Continental case fully describes and explains the methods of wrecking. A company is sold out or reinsured in another; that is, the stock has been bought up at two or three hundred per centum, the officers have been promised good places, or paid in cash for their silence. Immediately the operations of the wreckers begin. The agents of both companies go into the work with a single aim, and that aim is to obtain the surrender of the policies in the old company in exchange for new policies in the purchasing corporation. The old policies represent an actual liability; the company which has issued them is obliged to hold a certain sum against each of them. The aggregate of these sums makes up the "reserve" or reinsurance fund. As fast as the old policies are cancelled this reserve is released, and when all the policies are cancelled there is no liability at all. The new policies of course have no liability. This is in short the whole operation of wrecking. By such means a million or two of assets will be distributed, and in the process the policy-holders will receive a little--a very little--and the agents a good deal, and the officers composing the ring all that is left. The arts, the deceptions, the false representations made in the course of the proceeding to induce the policy-holder to give up his policy have been fully disclosed by the evidence in question. Of course it is suggested that the company is in a bad way, and that there is probably no other way of securing anything unless an opportunity now offered of changing is embraced. Reinsurance was abandoned as a means of wrecking because it was found the policy-holders preferred to keep the old policy and the new guarantee together. So in the later transactions they are told that if they do not change, they will get nothing. The lesson of all this to the policy-holder may be written in large letters and kept as a maxim: DO NOT SURRENDER YOUR POLICY. You will never make a mistake by keeping to this motto. And particularly the more should it be kept to when you are urged by agents to a contrary action. You never get one-third its value even in companies honestly managed; what you get in companies dishonestly managed no one can tell. FALLEN AMONG THIEVES. BRUSSELS!