OPPORTUNITIES IN JUGO-SLAVIA
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sla.,—The announcement that seven new bridges are to be built in Jugo-Slavia calls attention to the present great develop- ments in that country and I submit that this is an instance of the necessity of prompt co-operation among British financial, engineering and manufacturing interests in order to secure work for our own countrymen.
The present railway construction scheme in Jugo-Slavia, involving a total expenditure of some millions of pounds, has been put in hand chiefly with the help of American or German capital and practically all the materials have been supplied by German manufacturers, the irony of the situation bein3 that these German manufacturers often actually obtained in the London market the necessary credit to tide them over till com- pletion of the work.
What Germany can do, we can do. Germany, it is true, sup- plied the first materials as reparation payments, but I see no reason why we should allow her manufacturers to be first in future to make financial arrangements which we are at liberty to make ourselves and which would result in work for our own engineers and manufacturers. Are we manufacturers not too suspicious of those countries in Europe which lack ready money only because their vast natural resources are as yet unt upped ?
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