War-time financial problems

i84 FOREIGN CAPITAL

it will certainly want. If, besides what it can get
at home, it can also get a considerable amount from
foreign countries, then its ability to resume work on
a prosperous and profitable basis when the war is
over will be very greatly helped. This would seem
to be so obvious that one might have thought that
even a Government which is believed to be flirting
with what is called Tariff Reform would think twice
before it imposed any restrictions on the free flow
of foreign capital into British industry. In so far
as foreigners lend to us we shall be able to import
raw materials, to be worked up to the profit of
British industry, in return for promises to pay—
a very timely convenience at a critical moment.

Nevertheless, it would appear that obviousness
of the desirability of foreign capital, from whatever
source it comes, is by no means evident to those
who are now in charge of the nation's destinies.
At any rate, the Company Law Amendment Com-
mittee, which was appointed last February " to
inquire what amendments are expedient in the
Companies Acts, 1908 to 1917, particularly having
regard to circumstances arising out of the war and
of the developments likely to arise on its conclusion/'
seems to have thought it necessary to provide the
Government with schemes by which alien capital
could, if the Government thought necessary, be kept
out of the country. It was a powerful and repre-
sentative Committee, and it is very satisfactory to
note that its own view concerning the policy to be
pursued was strongly in favour of freedom. It
points out in its Report that the question which