shall probably have to pass through a transition stage which may extend over a decade. During the five years preceding the war we used to invest about 2007. millions per annum by way of loans to Colonies and foreign countries. On the present basis of prices this average would represent a value of 400l. millions per annum ; but, if we intend to make good our war losses as quickly as possible and provide employment for the men who are coming back and the munition workers who will be discharged, we must make provision for the investment of much larger sums abroad in the transition period. I think they should be not less than 600l. or 7007. millions per annum. This is quite feasible. In its ultimate form, this kind of investment represents the excess of production over consumption of commodities and services. It should be quite practicable for this country, while relaxing the war strain on the industrial population, to produce 8001. or 9007. millions more services and commodities than it consumes, provided the cooperation of Capital and Labour is obtained.

The weakest point in our position is that of shipping. We have lost about four million tons, and the remainder of the tonnage is in need of repair and overhauling; but the new shipbuilding programmes in this country and America should improve the position. It is a national misfortune that the nation should have been manoeuvred into an attitude of hostility to the shipowners. Thanks to private enterprise, we possessed at the outbreak of war a vital and incomparable weapon without which the nation could not have carried on the war. The course of freights since the Government requisitioned shipping has proved conclusively that the shipowners, in allowing the law of supply and demand to take its course in fixing rates, were acting on sound and, in the circumstances, inevitable lines; and that the charge of profiteering was due to the economic ignorance and the jealousy of sections of the British public. The recovery of this country from the economic wastage of war will be gravely menaced if the State attempts to continue a day longer than is absolutely necessary the control of shipping; and I would suggest that our shipowners. should take the Labour leaders into their confidence and discuss this vital question with them, for on a clear

understanding of the issue the future of the British Empire must largely depend.

The whole ground should be comprehensively surveyed. We must see what tonnage we are likely to have, what supplies of raw materials will be available, what our principal foreign customers require, what we can manufacture, and what they can sell us in exchange; and then form overseas development corporations for Canada, Australia, India, South Africa, New Zealand, West Africa, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Palestine, East Africa, and the Crown Colonies. We must also provide for the development of trade with Belgium, France, Italy, Serbia, Russia, etc. It will not be an easy matter to hold the balance between the claims of our different Allies for the expansion of our trade, but it is obvious that the development of Empire trade must be our first consideration.

During the war we have evolved the machinery requisite for the transference of a great portion of the resources of the country to the State, i.e. through War Loans. In the transition period we must provide machinery for the re-transfer of these resources from the State back to the individuals—that is, from War Loans into oversea joint stock enterprises. The banks must either provide loan facilities on a vast scale or establish a great national loan institution, which will accept War Loans, National Bonds, etc., as collateral, and issue in exchange therefor credit notes, which could be applied for the purpose of subscribing capital for these overseas enterprises in such a manner as will prevent inflation of credit. Unless some such machinery is provided, there is a danger that the market will be flooded with sales of war stock, etc., by holders who wish to take up again their industrial and commercial occupations, and require cash for the purchase of manufactured goods or raw materials.

Concurrently with this vast expansion of our foreign trade we must be prepared with an equally big scheme of Empire settlement. Before the war emigration was proceeding from the United Kingdom at the rate of 300,000 per annum. It may be confidently assumed that this rate will be accelerated after the war. There can

be no question as to the need for this if the Empire is to maintain its position in the world. We could not have

built up and held the British Empire if we had not encouraged our people to emigrate; and it cannot be doubted that the United Kingdom has attained a much more powerful position in the world and a greater efficiency in war from the emigration of her sons and daughters than she would have attained if she had restricted their emigration.

A general process of consolidation and reorganisation is going on throughout the country, both with regard to capital and labour. The great joint-stock banks are amalgamating. The shipping companies and great industrial undertakings, such as coal, iron and steel, are amalgamating. Employers are consolidating their forces into a smaller number of federations, while the Labour Party has been reorganised, and the women are developing their organisations. Our Consular system has been reorganised and an Overseas Intelligence Department elaborated. But all these measures will bear little fruit unless there is hearty cooperation between Capital and Labour, which will result in a great increase of production. In short, our economic position is perfectly sound. We have entirely revolutionised the character of our national production, and we are now producing commodities and services nearly equivalent in value to the commodities and services requisite to maintain our population at home and to carry on the war. I therefore see no reason to doubt that Great Britain can continue to carry this stupendous burden if the people do not weaken in their resolve, and provided that we do not withdraw too many men from production and that we maintain our mercantile marine.

EDGAR CRAMMOND.

Art. 13.-SINN FEIN AND GERMANY.

IN the Quarterly Review' for last January we traced the origin of the Sinn Fein movement and described its home and foreign policy down to 1916. We showed that, from 1903, Arthur Griffith and the group associated with him had insisted that Irish independence was to be achieved by making British Government in Ireland impossible, just as Hungarian independence had been won by making Austrian Government in Hungary impossible. We showed that, three years before the War, Roger Casement had formulated a foreign policy for Sinn Fein based upon the imminence of a struggle between Germany and England; that this policy had been endorsed by Bernhardi and was widely discussed in Germany in 1912; and that Casement and the Irish revolutionaries, through the German and Irish-American subsidised propaganda, had long before the War been urging the Irish to prepare to ally themselves with Germany in the anticipation that Germany would be victorious in the great struggle; that, at the Peace Congress, the European Powers, actuated by jealousy of England and controlled by Germany, would guarantee the independence of Ireland as a neutralised State; and that England would thus be deprived of the key of the world's sea power and have the Freedom of the Seas wrenched from her.

The Germanising policy thus advocated was, when the War broke out, and now is, the declared policy of Sinn Fein at home and abroad. This policy, pregnant in its inception with peril to Great Britain and the British Empire, drew, during its years of parturition, nourishment from the virus of English party; it was nursed to maturity by the half-informed doctrinaires and insouciant politicians called in to handle and prescribe for Ireland; and during the War it has developed into a danger to the liberties of the world.

In basing the policy of Sinn Fein upon a victory of Germany in the anticipated war with England, the Sinn Fein Executive, with Casement and Prof. Kuno Meyer, did not leave out of sight the danger that their calculations might be upset by an alliance between the United States and the United Kingdom, and that a contest for

supremacy between England and Germany might resolve itself finally into a racial combat between the AngloSaxon and Teutonic Powers. It thus became the settled determination of the Irish revolutionary leaders, in combination with the German elements in the United States, to provoke jealousies between England and America, and to embroil, so far as possible, the relations between Washington and London.

Prof. Kuno Meyer was actively associated with Casement in publishing articles and brochures with this object. In 1911 Casement wrote:

'The American Alliance may come off. The entente with France, already of great value, can be developed into something more assuredly anti-German; and, if the present-day relation of friendship with the United States can be but tightened into a mutual committal of both Powers to a common foreign policy, then the raid on Germany may never be needed. . . .

'A bitter resentment with fear at the bottom, a hurried clanging of bolt and rivet in the belt of new warships, and a muffled but diligent hammering at the rivets of an everbuilding American Alliance-the real Dreadnought this, whose keel was laid sixteen years ago, and whose secret construction has cost the silent swallowing of many a cherished British boast. . . That mightier Dreadnought yet to be-the Anglo-Saxon Alliance Germany must fight, if she is to get free.'

...

In 1914 Casement went to America, and was there when the war broke out. What he and his Sinn Fein associates were doing can be judged from this despatch sent in January 1916 from Berlin, and afterwards published by the American Secretary of State:

'Telegram from the German Foreign Office to Count von Bernstorff:

'January 26, for Military Attaché. You can obtain particulars as to persons suitable for carrying on sabotage in the United States and Canada from the following persons:

'(1) Joseph M'Garrity, Philadelphia, Pa.; (2) John P. Kealing, Michigan Avenue, Chicago; (3) Jeremiah O'Leary, 16 Park Row, New York. One and two are absolutely reliable but not always discreet. These persons are indicated by Sir Roger Casement. In the United States sabotage can be carried out on every kind of factory for supplying munitions of war.

Railway embankments and bridges must not