A CRITIC OF CONTROL
As one would have expected, Sir Ernest Berm, who must be counted among the sturdiest advocates of individual enterprise, took the opportunity at the annual meeting of the United Kingdom Provident Institution to sound a note of warning about some of our war-time controls. He does not question the need for regulation in accelerating the war effort, but he suspects that some of the schemes foisted on the business world have been the product not so much of the desire to win the war as to embody the ideas of the enemies of private enterprise. He takes the view that control and management, while justified by war needs, are devices for use by dictators who rely not on confidence but on force, and that those things have no part in any true conception of a democracy at peace. As to the position of insurance corn- (Continued on page 432) FINANCE AND INVESTMENT (Continued from page 431) panies in relation to war, Sir Ernest faced unpleasant fact-, frankly. At the same time he emphasised the great advan- tage at which the companies now stand in the way of financial strength and preparedness by comparison with 1914. Thy United Kingdom Provident, he stated, has intact its reserve fund of £ r,000,000.
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