harassing and so detrimental as to be, as a matter of business, impossible.  The only effectual way of dealing with the matter would be by a provision that the share might be forfeited, or might be sold and the proceeds paid to the owner, if an alien should be, or become beneficially entitled to or interested in the share.  Such a provision does not in the general case commend itself to us as practical or desirable.”  Any endeavour to control the nationality of the Board of Directors produces similar difficulties.  It is easy to ensure that they shall be all, or a majority of them, British subjects, but there is no means of ensuring that their actions shall not be controlled by aliens whose nationality is not disclosed.

Having pointed out these difficulties, which seem in effect to reduce the whole question to the domain of farce, the Committee goes on to inquire whether it is desirable to legislate in the direction of forbidding the employment of foreign capital here in Joint Stock Companies, unless:—­

(1) There is disclosure of the alien character of the foreign owner; (2) Not more than a certain proportion of the Company’s shares are held by aliens; (3) The Board, or a certain proportion of the Board, shall not be alien;

and, further, whether it is desirable to discriminate between one alien and another, and to legislate in that direction in the case of certain aliens and not of others.

In answering these questions, the Committee decided that it was necessary to discriminate between certain classes of companies—­Class A being companies in general, Class B being companies owning British shipping, and Class C companies engaged in “key” industries.  With regard to companies in Class A, they recommend that no restrictions at all be imposed, but, nevertheless, they elaborate a scheme of enforcing disclosure of alien ownership if that policy seems to the legislature to be right.  This scheme, the Committee admits, is necessarily detailed and laborious; it puts difficulties in the way of investment in English securities, whether by British subject or alien.  It would supply, no doubt, to the Board of Trade useful information as to the extent of foreign investment in English industries, but the price paid for this advantage would, in the Committee’s opinion, be too great.  If adopted, the scheme could be evaded.  And, with regard to companies in general, the Committee’s recommendations go the length of allowing complete freedom as to the nationality both of the corporators and of the Board.  They would allow, for instance, American capitalists to come here and establish themselves as a British corporation in which all the corporators and all the directors were American, and so with every other nationality.  They would make no discrimination between aliens of different nationality, for, if there is to be such discrimination, there must be the machinery of disclosure, involving a deterrent effect and acting prejudicially in the case of all investors.  But, if any such discrimination were adopted, the Committee thinks that at any rate it should be limited to some short period, say, three or five years after the end of the war.