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method and detail to determine whether it is administratively practicable. Incidentally, alternative variants of the scheme may be examined and suggested, provided that they are confined within the same main limits of principle, and do not involve the Treasury in any vast or incalculable liability.

(Signed)

M. P. A. HANKEY (Secretary).

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL (Chairman). *ESHER.

EDWARD TROUP.

LOUIS BATTENBERG.

H. LLEWELLYN SMITH.

*Note by Viscount Esher.

I wish to express my strong agreement with the policy advocated by the Admiralty in paragraph 19 and my dissent from the more limited proposals referred to in paragraph 22.—ESHER.

Minority Report.

THE principle of adopting a National Guarantee in any form was rejected in 1908 by the very strong Treasury Committee presided over by Mr. Austen Chamberlain. In appending (in extenso) that Committee's "Summary of Conclusions," we desire to record our opinion that the Admiralty representatives have not made out a case which would justify the Government in reviving the project.

WALTER RUNCIMAN. ROBERT CHALMERS.

APPENDIX.

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Report by the Committee on a National Guarantee for the War Risks of Shipping.

SUMMARY OF CONCLUSIONS.

HAVING finished our survey of the evidence, and having passed in review the principal points which arose in the course of our inquiry, we are now in a position to summarise the conclusions at which we have arrived. We have already stated that the evidence on almost every point was of a most conflicting character. From the nature of the inquiry committed to us this was inevitable. Material for forming a conclusive judgment is not available, and the major portion of the evidence given by witnesses dealt necessarily with matters of opinion on which others equally competent might, and often did, express diametrically contrary views. We recognise that in the mass of evidence given before our Committee, or recorded in the Blue Books of the Royal Commission on Food Supplies, there is much which would support a different conclusion from that at which we have arrived; but, after giving full weight to these diverse opinions, we are of opinion that it is not desirable that the State should undertake to make good to shipowners or traders the losses incurred by them through the capture of shipping by the enemy in time of war.

2. The advocates of such a proposal argue that in the absence of a National Guarantee the shipping industry and oversea trade of the United Kingdom will be thrown into confusion on the outbreak of naval war between this country and any other great naval Power; that shipping will be laid up or transferred to neutral flags;

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