Though the giant Cunarder still lies in the stocks at
Clydeside, the race in luxury liners is being kept going well enough : Italy with the' Rex' and the 'Conte di Savoia,' and France with the ` Normandie,' which took the water this week. It is all very gratifying, no doubt, to national prestige, but it is certain all these monsters will run at a dead loss ; the big six- and five-day boats are half-empty as it is. I remember Herr Cuno, head of the Hamburg- Amerika line, telling me not long after the War that the confiscation of the monster German liners (the present ' Leviathan ' and ` Majestic ' and ` Berengaria ') was a blessing in disguise, for it compelled the German companies to build new medium-sized vessels, which could be run at rates that the post-War German traveller could afford to pay. Since then, of course, the Germans have built the 'Deutschland ' and Europa '—which have landed the Nord-Deutscher Lloyd in a heavy deficit. Intrinsieak Herr - Cuno's belief in the- seven- or eight-day one-elass boat as a business proposition is as sound as ever.
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