attracted to this country, there was little, if any, difference of opinion.  For this very sensible conclusion the Committee gives rather a curious reason.  It states that the maintenance of London as the financial centre of the world is of the first importance for the well-being of the Empire, and that anything which could impede or restrict the free flow of capital to the United Kingdom would, in itself, be prejudicial to Imperial interests.

Now, of course, if is entirely true that the maintenance of London as a financial centre is very important, but I venture to think that those who are most jealous concerning the prestige of London and the importance of its financial operations would say that it ranks only second to the industrial efficiency of the country as a whole and cannot, in fact, be long maintained unless there is that industrial efficiency behind it, providing a surplus out of which London may be able to finance the world and so, incidentally, and as a side issue, be to a great extent helped by foreign capital to do so.  It is surely evident that a financial supremacy which was based merely on a jobbing business, gathering in capital from one nation and lending it to another, would be an extremely precarious and artificial structure, the continuance of which could not be relied on for many decades.  Finance can only flourish healthily and wholesomely in a country which produces a considerable surplus of goods and services which it is prepared to place at the disposal of the world.  Owing to the possession of this surplus it becomes a market in capital, and so gets a considerable jobbing business, but the backbone and foundation of its position must be, in the end, industrial activity in the widest sense of the word.  It therefore seems that the Committee’s argument that the free flow of capital is essential to the maintenance of London’s finance might have been reinforced by the very much stronger one that it is essential to the recuperative power of British industry, which will need every assistance it can get in order to re-establish itself after the war.

The Committee points out that “any legislation which would tend to impede or restrict the free flow of capital here by imposing restrictions or creating impediments ought to be jealously watched, lest in the endeavour to prevent what has come to be called ’peaceful penetration’ the normal course of commercial development should be arrested,” and it goes on to observe that at the end of the war, “if it should be concluded upon such terms as we hope and anticipate,” it is not likely that our present enemies will be in possession of capital looking for employment abroad.  This is certainly very true.  By the time the Germans have made the reparations, which will involve so much rebuilding in Belgium and in the parts of France that they have overrun and swept clean of industrial plant, and have in other respects made good the damage which their ruthless and uncivilised methods of warfare have inflicted,