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° 7 q ge Vy) y) Y Z KCS yy A Zs By Careful Coordination of Plans and Effective Cooperation Between Ship Owners England Hopes to Maintain Her Maritime Supremacy PF BRITISH shipping: is: not. as iI supreme after the war as it was before the war, that will not be the fault of any of the individual firms concerned, according to the Glasgow Herald. All the companies—cargo as well as passenger — have been doing their utmost to maintain their ordinary services and at the same time meet the heavy demands of the naval and mili- tary authorities. It is also evident that they are endeavoring to anticipate the requirements of the after-the-war trade and to be ready to meet successfully the competition of what are at present enemy countries. They cannot do this unless they can build up strong re- serves in the times when money is to be made, so that they may be able to spend more freely and to cut rates on freight if necessary when the testing time comes. This is a point on which the many critics of the ship owners are curiously silent. These as- sume that the profits which are being announced all represent clear gain and have no relation either to the past or to the future. They have: really a close relation to both. In many cases they help to make good the losses of previous years or to pay belated interest on _ capital sunk in enterprises useful to the country but hitherto unprofitable to their promoters.. In others they mean that the firms concerned will be more cap- able of taking their part in the great commercial struggle to which they are looking forward, and in which, if they fail, they will drag down with them the prestige of British shipping and the power of the nation to maintain itself as the leading maritime country of the world. We are not pleading for inordinate profits for ship owners any more than for any other class in the community, but it is necessary that we should see questions of this kind in their true per- spective and from the point of view of our national interests after the war. It is necessary to “control” freights in cer- tain services, because this is demanded by the exigencies of the war, and it may be found equally necessary to take steps to reduce the high cost of carry- ing the necessaries of life. But it must always be remembered that shipping does not exist for the period of the war only, and that the “rainy day” for which view, it has to prepare will come when the naval and military authorities of Europe have made up their sanguinary quarrels, and when the warfare is transferred to the commercial activities of the respec- tive nations. In addition to financial soundness there must be a well defined national policy, and also the ability on the part of the great ship owning firms to con- trol trade over the largest possible areas, and in every possible part of the world. The national policy is a matter for the executive government, and it is one to which their attention cannot be given at too early a stage. But the ability to control worldwide trade de- pends very largely on the enterprise of individual firms, and on their capacity for acting with a common purpose in A Viking’s End HE MAN who crossed the Ailantic ocean alone in a little fishing dory lost his life last winter, through some ironical whim of fate, on the ice / a few yards from his ship at Lorain. His name was é Ludwig Eisenbraun, and his exploit filled the front » pages of newspapers more than twenty years ago. Since then the. plucky sailor disappeared from public in his vocation as a barge engineer. the past eight or ten years he had been in the employ of the Pittsburgh Steamship Co., and was engaged as a watchman on the ship BLack PRINCE when found frozen on the ice-covered harbor not far from his charge. the national interests. They can do this best by joining forces, gamations of capital or as federations of firms, working in harmony instead of in competition. The amalgamation of the Cunard Steamship Co. and _ the Commonwealth and Dominion Line is an apt illustration of the first of these methods. For several years past the Cunard company has been lengthening its cords and strengthening its stakes— extending its. influence first in one di- rection and then in another. The same may be said of the Canadian Pacific Railway Co., and to a less extent of other British lines which have, by amalgamations or working agreements, helped to make isolated firms into powerful groups, and so to consolidate British interests. The time is past when each firm of ship owners had its own particular route, to which is confined itself, and outside of which it rarely ventured. The Ham- burg-Amerika line and the Nord- deutscher Lloyd have long acted on the assumption that all the world was their field. They have multiplied services ex- 353 During either as amal- ceedingly, sending their ships into every corner of the globe where trade was to be picked up, and trusting to the aggre- gate profits to cover whatever losses might be sustained on “side line” enter- prises. If, after the war, British ship- ping as a whole follows the same gen- eral policy, it will be quite justified by present circumstances, and, in all prob- ability, by results. We heard much in pre-war days of an All-Red route across the North Atlantic and Canada, and down the Pacific to Australia and New Zealand. Evidently the Cunard Co. has in view a still greater imperial service, as its absorption of the Com- monwealth and Dominion Line, its re- cent working arrangement with the Canadian Northern Railway Co., and its earlier joining up with the Anchor and Brocklebank North Atlantic and Indian services—all act- ing in wunison—vwill permit them to inaugurate an All- British, round-the-world route of an unprecedentedly com- prehensive © character. By such enterprise as_ these methods show, and by the cooperation of all British shipping for the promotion of imperial interests, it should be possible not only to retain the trade of the empire in British hands, but also to compete very strongly throughout the rest of the world with what will remain for many years “enemy” shipping. But the enterprise of individual firms, or that of many firms acting in harmony, cannot prove successful unless it is powerfully supported by the home government and the governments of the dominions. The royal navy and the mercantile marine have been working hand in hand all through the war. They are absolutely inseparable, and the existence of each has depended wholly upon the other. The fleets are really one, not two. This fact was not realized previous to the war as it is now, and as, we may be sure, it will be realized in future. In the same way we must realize that the continued existence of the British Empire depends upon the prosperity of its mercantile marine—that each depends wholly upon the other. _There may be a middle way for a continental power, which may be able to make itself self- contained and independent of the rest of the world. There is no middle way © for us. We must be either a powerful maritime empire or no empire at all,