ils 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 wo