not only on their enemies, but on neutrals, it does not seem likely that they will have much to spare for capital expansion in foreign countries, especially when we consider how many problems of reconstruction they will themselves have to face at home.  “To impose restrictions upon the influx of capital,” the Report continues, “aimed at our present enemies, with the result of deterring the flow of capital from (say) America, would be a policy highly injurious to the economic recovery and renewed prosperity of this country after the war.  For these reasons we are of opinion that in all amendments of the law falling within the scope of our reference, the expediency of the attraction of foreign capital should be steadily borne in mind.”  The Committee thus seems to have thought it necessary to administer comfort to anybody who might fear that the unrestricted flow of capital from abroad might involve this country in the terrible danger of being assisted in its industrial recovery by capital from Germany.

If there were, in fact, any possibility of this assistance being given, it would seem to be extremely short-sighted not to allow British industry to make use of it.  In the matter of “peaceful penetration,” we have ourselves in the past done perhaps as much as all the rest of the countries of the world put together, with the result that we have greatly stimulated the development of economic prosperity all over the world; in fact, it may be argued that the great progress made in the last century in man’s power over the forces of Nature has been to a great extent due to the freedom with which we invested capital abroad and opened a free market to the products of all other countries.  At a time when, owing to exceptional circumstances, we ourselves happen to be in need of capital, it would appear to be an extremely short-sighted policy to refuse to admit it, wherever it came from.  We have excellent reason to known that, when capital is once invested in a foreign country, it is largely in the power of the inhabitants and Government of that country to control its working.  Any foreigner, even an enemy, who set up a factory in England after the war would be doing just the very thing which we most of all want to be done, namely, setting the wheels of industry going, relieving the labour market from a possible glut after demobilisation, and helping that difficult stage of transition from war work to peace work.

The Committee, however, considers that “at the root of the whole matter lies a question which is not one of Company Law amendment at all, but one of high political and economic policy.”  It does not fall within its province “to inquire whether the traditional policy of this country to admit and welcome all who seek our shores and submit themselves loyally to our laws ought, in the case of some and what aliens, to be revised”; or whether discrimination ought to be made between an alien of one nationality and an alien of another.  “As