PAYING FOR OUR IMPORTS.
By common consent the address delivered last week by Mr. Walter Runciman, the President of the Chambei. of Shipping of the United Kingdom, was one of exceptional interest and value. It is impossible, within the space of a short note, to traverse the ground covered by Mr. Runciman, but there was one point in particular which cannot be too strongly emphasized. After referring to the great value rendered by shipping to the general trade and prosperity of the country, and demonstrating that these services bad been rendered by individual and not by State enterprises, Mr. Runciman made it clear to the man in the street that it is to these individual industrial enterprises and to the past accumulations of capital that we owe our power to-day to pay for the very food we import from abroad. We know from the official Board of Trade figures that we entirely fail to pay for our imports by our " visible " exports, and the shortcomings are made up by what are usually described as " invisible ' exports. Prominent among these invisible exports, and ranking collectively for some hundreds of millions, are our shipping freights and the interest we receive annually upon our holdings of foreign investments, these latter, of course, representing the savings of past generations. * * * *
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