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10th Day.] All-Red Route. [16 June, 1911. Mr. LLOYD GEORGE— cont. ference as President of the Board of Trade, and I was instructed by the Government to accept the resolution, and to try to find some practical means of putting it into operation. From the sentimental point of view Ido not think there is any doubt in the minds of any one that it would be exceedingly desirable. Anything that would bring the various parts of the Empire nearer together is, of course, a very desirable end in itself, but the difficulties are entirely practical, and they are very great. We did not treat that resolution merely as an expression of opinion. A committee was instantly formed, I think, by the Board of Trade. I think my Right Honourable friend the President of the Board of Trade, who was then at the Post Office, was a member, and we had the Colonial Office represented by Mr. Winston Churchill, and we went into the matter at very considerable length. We took evidence. I wired to Sir Joseph Ward to ask him to give me the names of some gentlemen here who would represent the New Zealand point of view, and I think he famished me with one or two names, and we sent for them and took their evidence with regard to the practicability of it, and the cost of it. We also had evidence from Canada, not all friendly. Sir Thomas Shaughnessy came and gave evidence ; he expressed a desire to come and give evidence, and of course we said certainly, and he came and his opinion was certainly not a friendly one according to my recollection. But we had evidence which was very favourable. We had the evidence of shipowners. We went into the cost of it and we found the difficulties were very great. The difficulties were not as great on the Atlantic side, where you have a volume of trade, but on the Pacific side they were almost insuperable. They were insuperable so far as a really fast service was concerned. We tried 11, 15, 16, 18, and 21 knots, and the 21 knots we found perfectly prohibitive on the Pacific side. Then we came to 18 knots, and we had to find out first of all what it would cost. We found that it would cost an enormous sum to run a fast service across the Pacific, but there was a difficulty about a coaling station which, as Sir Joseph Ward has pointed out, has to a certain extent been solved since then. Then came the question as to what we would get on the credit side. On the Atlantic route there was a very fair chance of making it pay in a few years time, but on the Pacific side there was no prospect of making it pay. We should have had to depend entirely upon the passengers and mails. You could not really carry goods. The statement made by Mr. Fisher only yesterday, I think, is absolutely incontrovertible to any one who has gone into the evidence ; you cannot hope to carry goods across a route of this kind which involves a double transhipment. First of all you have to disembark your goods on Vancouver, put them on the trucks, run them across, and then re-embark them across the Atlantic. So that from the point of view of carrying goods it was perfectly impossible; we should have had to depend entirely upon passengers and upon mails. That would involve a very considerable loss on the Pacific side. I was instructed on behalf of the Government to say then that we were prepared within reasonable limits to meet Canada, New Zealand, and Australia to make up that deficiency. Then our difficulty was this : who was to undertake to bring the parties together and arrange the bargain, because it involved an agreement, not merely upon a general resolution, but on the details of a considerable business transaction between Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. I put that point indirectly to somebody who came from Canada to see me, and I said that somebody ought to be in the position of promoter. All that we could do would be to say that we are perfectly willing to come in, we are willing to subscribe, but we could not undertake, as it were, the promotion of the scheme, and somebody had to do that, I understood. Sir Wilfrid will correct me if I am wrong—that Canada said, " Very well, we will communicate with the other Dominions." Now that happened two or three years ago, and I have heard nothing ever since, so that nothing has been done. So that there are two difficulties, and the first is the preliminary difficulty of bringing the parties together to discuss the thing, and put it in a form in which the respective Governments can consider it. We have never been in that position up to the present, and it is perfectly clear that cannot be settled at a Conference like this, where so many other questions have to be discussed. It is a matter which will take weeks and even months of consideration. You have to have the opinion of shipowners upon it, to find out exactly what it costs, what a 16-knot service would cost, what an 18-knot service