to make researches and to give special facilities to firms entering the industry, all in the national interest. A huge, subsidised mother concern, known as British Dyes, Limited, has been formed, and it will take the place of the great dye trust of Germany, in which the government was a partner.

This procedure is being repeated in the launching of an optical-glass industry; this trade has also been in Teutonic hands. I could cite many other instances, but these will show the new spirit of British commercial enterprise and protection.

Everywhere nationalisation is the keynote of trade activity. Coal furnishes an instance: The collieries of the kingdom not only stoke the fires of myriad furnaces but drive the ships of a mighty marine. Through her control of coal England has one whip hand over her allies, for many of the French mines are in the occupied districts, and Italy's supply from Germany has stopped. Coal means life in war or peace. Now England proposes a state control of coal similar to that of railroads.

It spells fresh power over the neutral shipping that coals at British ports. If the government controls the coal it will be in a position to stipulate the use that the consumer shall make of it, and require him to call for his return cargo at specified ports. Such supervision in war may mean similar domination in peace—another bulwark for British control of the sea.

Throughout England all trade facilities are being broadened and bettered. The local Chambers of Commerce, whose chief function for years was solemnly to pass resolutions, have stirred out of their slumbers. The Birmingham body has formed a House of Commerce to stimulate and develop the commerce of the capital of the Midlands.

This stimulation at home is accompanied by a programme of trade extension abroad. The Board of Trade has granted a licence to the Latin-American Chamber of Commerce in Great Britain, formed to promote British trade in Central and South America and Mexico. Sections of the chamber are being organised for each of the important trades and industries in the kingdom, and committees named to enter into negotiations with every one of the Latin-American republics, where offices will be established in all important towns.

The Board of Trade has also learned the lesson of co-operation for foreign trade. As one result, British syndicates, composed of small manufacturers, who share the overhead cost, are forming to open up new markets the world over. These syndicates correspond with the familiar German Cartel, which did so much to plant German products wherever the sun shone.

England, too, has wiped out one other block to her trade expansion: For years many of her consuls were naturalised Germans. Many of them were trustworthy public servants. Others, true to the promptings of birth, diverted trade to their Fatherland. To-day the Consular Service is purged of Teutonic blood. It is one more evidence of the gospel of "England for the English!"

All this new trade expansion cannot be achieved without the real sinew of war, which is capital. Here, too, England is awake to the emergency. Typical of her plan of campaign is the projected British Trade Bank, which will provide facilities for oversea commercial development, and which will not conflict with the work ordinarily done by the joint-stock, colonial and British foreign banks. It will do for British foreign trade what the huge German combinations of capital did so long and so effectively for Teuton commerce. Furthermore, it will make a close corporation of finance and trade, with the government sitting in the board of directors and lending all the aid that imperial support can bestow.

The bank will be capitalised at fifty million dollars. It will not accept deposits subject to call at short notice, which means constant mobilisation of resources; it will open accounts only with those who propose to make use of its oversea machinery; it will specialise in credits for clients abroad, and it will become the centre of syndicate operations. One of its chief purposes, I might add, will be to enable the British manufacturer and exporter to assume profitably the long credits so much desired in foreign trade.

From the confidential report of its organisation let me quote one illuminating paragraph which is full of suggestion for American banking, for it shows the new idea of British preparedness for world business. Here it is:

"Nearly as important as the Board would be the General Staff. It is fair to assume that women will in the future take a considerable share in purely clerical work, and this fact will enable the institution to take fuller advantage of the qualifications of its male staff to push its affairs in every quarter of the globe. Youths should not be engaged without a language qualification, and after a few years' training they should be sent abroad. It could probably be arranged that associated banks abroad would agree to employ at each of their principal branches one of the Institution's clerks, not necessarily to remain there for an indefinite period, but to get a knowledge of the trade and characteristics of the country. Such clerks might in many cases sever their connection with the banks to which they were appointed and start in business on their own account. They would, however, probably look upon the institution as their 'Alma Mater,' Every endeavour should be made to promote esprit de corps; and where exceptional ability is developed it should be ungrudgingly rewarded. If industry is to be extended it is essential that British products should be pushed; and manufacturers, merchants and bankers must combine to push them. It is believed that this pushing could be assisted by the creation of a body of young business men in the way above described."

The scope and purpose of this British Trade Bank suggest another East India Company with all the possibilities of gold and glory which attended that romantic eighteenth-century enterprise. Perhaps another Clive or a second Hastings is somewhere in the making.

That the British Government proposes to follow the German lead and definitely go into business—thus reversing its tradition of aloofness from financial enterprise—is shown in the new British and Italian Corporation, formed to establish close economic relations between Britain and Italy. It starts a whole era in British banking, for it means the subsidising of a private undertaking out of national funds.

It embodies a meaning that goes deeper and travels much farther than this. Up to the outbreak of the great war Germany was the banker of Italy. Cities like Milan and Rome were almost completely in the grip of the Teutonic lender, and his country cashed in strong on this surest and hardest of all dominations. This was the one big reason why the Italian declaration of war against Germany was so long delayed. With this new banking corporation England not only supplants the German influence but forges the economic irons that will bind Italy to her.

The capital of the British and Italian Corporation is nominally only five million dollars. The government, however, agrees to contribute during each of the first ten years of its existence the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Though imperial stimulation of trade is one of its main objects, this institution is not without its larger political value. As this and many other similar enterprises show, politics and world trade, so far as Great Britain is concerned, will hereafter be closely interwoven.

Throughout all this British organisation runs the increasing purpose of an Empire Self-Contained. Whether