I do not intend at the present moment to go further into the details of the policy which the Unionist Government will be likely to adopt on this question.  I think, however, it would be desirable to point out that in dairy produce and poultry, in barley and oats, in hops, tobacco, sugar-beet, vegetables and fruit, in all of which Ireland is especially interested, Irish products would have free entry into the protected markets of Great Britain, Canadian and Australian products would of course have such a preference over foreign competitors as a Home Rule Ireland might claim, but it is only under the Union that Ireland could expect complete freedom of access to our markets.  Mr. Amery sees in the train ferry a possible bridge over the St. George’s Channel and looks forward to the time when the west coast of Ireland will be the starting point of all our fast mail and passenger steamers across the Atlantic.  Two schemes with this object have received the attention of Parliament.  How far the present practical difficulties can be surmounted it is not very easy to say, but it is certain that if Home Rule were granted the Blacksod Bay and the Galway Bay Atlantic routes would have to be abandoned.

These conditions naturally raise the whole transport problem in Ireland.  Mr. Arthur Samuels suggests a scheme of State assistance to a cheap transport which may require attention later on, though it can only form part of a larger scheme of traffic reorganisation.  The Nationalist Party seems definitely to have pledged itself to a scheme of nationalisation.  This policy has been urged in season and out of season upon an apathetic Ireland by the Freeman’s Journal. The cost of the nationalisation of Irish railways could not be less than fifty millions, while the annual charge on the Exchequer was assessed by the Irish Railways Commission at L250,000, and it was anticipated that a further recourse to Irish rates might be required.  It would be obviously impossible to ask the British Treasury to advance such an enormous sum of money to an independent Irish Government.

At what rate could an Irish government raise the money?  The present return on Irish Railway capital is 3.77 per cent., and thus, to borrow fifty millions at 4 per cent, will involve an annual loss of over L300,000 a year, even without a sinking fund.  It is extremely doubtful whether the credit of an Irish Government would be better than that of Hungary or Argentina.  If anything more surely led an Irish Government to financial disaster it would be the working of railways.  As the Majority Report of the Railway Commission recommended on other than commercial lines, the 25 per cent. reduction in rates and fares suggested by Nationalist witnesses would involve a loss of more than half a million a year.  We see, therefore, immediately, that if anything is to be done at all to improve Irish transport it must be done by a Government that has the confidence of the money market.  The railway director who contributes the principal article on this subject in the book calculates that a public grant of two millions, and a guaranteed loan of eight millions would suffice to carry out all the reforms that are necessary in order to place Irish railways in a thoroughly sound position.