without inconvenience, he could favour me with a general account of what
had been done in the matter of issuing licences, and my letter was
promised attention, but up to the moment of delivering this address I
have had no further reply. I can only, then, discuss the proposed policy
on its theoretic merits.[1] The theoretic issues are fairly clear.
Either the licensing power of the Board of Trade has been used to
exclude competitive imports or it has not. If it has been so used, it is
obvious that we have no security whatever for the maintenance of the
industry in question in a state of efficiency. In the terms of the case,
it is enabled to persist in the use of plant and of methods which may be
inferior to those used in the countries whose competition has been
excluded. Then the very object posited as the justification for the Act,
the securing of a thoroughly efficient key industry necessary to the
production of munitions, is not attained by the fiscal device under
notice. If, on the other hand, there has been no barring of imports
under the licence system, the abstention from use of it is an admission
that it was either unnecessary or injurious or was felt to be useless
for its purpose.

[Footnote 1: The promised statistics were soon afterwards sent to Mr.
Robertson by the Board of Trade. They will be found in the _Liberal
Magazine_ for September, 1922, p. 348.--ED.]

And the common-sense verdict on the whole matter is that if continuous
and vigilant research and experiment in the chemistry of dye-making is
held to be essential to the national safety, the proper course is for
the Government to establish and maintain a department or arsenal for
such research and experiment, unhampered by commercial exigencies. Such
an institution may or may not be well managed. But a dividend-earning
company, necessarily concerned first and last with dividend earning, and