NEWS OF TIIE WEEK.
?THE result of the negotiations which were known to be
proceeding between the Cunard Company and the Govern- ment with the object of preventing the Cunard steamers being sucked into the Combine were published on Wednesday. The chief provisions of the agreement between the Govern- ment and the Company are that the Company is to be lent the money to build two twenty-five-knot steamers at 2f per cent., and that the Admiralty subvention is to be raised to 2150,000 a year, on condition that for twenty years the Company shall remain wholly British. The entire fleet of the Company is to be held during that time at the disposal of the British Government, and the Company pledges itself not to raise rates and not to allow preferential rates to foreigners. This agreement of itself secures the freedom of the Atlantic, and the possession by Government in an emer- gency of an extensive supplementary transport fleet. We think, then, that on the whole the agreement can be justified, though we hate shipping subsidies quite as much as Sir Michael Hicks Beach, and believe that the shippers could have fought the Morgan Combine as well as the British tobacco manufacturers fought the Tobacco Trust. On naval grounds, however, we hold that our Government ought to be able to put its hands in case of war on the fastest things afloat. But this was impossible without paying a subsidy, for there is no money in the commercial sense in twenty-five-knot cruisers. When the new Cunarders are built we shall have two vessels equal, if not superior, in pace to the fastest German subsidised bum That is a piece of naval strength worth paying for.
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