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 mail speed by present services, and also by exercising a watchful control of British oversea traffic in view of trade rivalry. The importance of adequate mail speed to Imperial communications cannot be exaggerated, and rapidity of transit largely depends upon the amount of the mail subsidy which is granted. What the precise rate of speed should be must necessarily vary according to circumstances. In some cases high speed is essential, and in general the speed should not be less than that of foreign mail-ships running on the same routes; but no limit should be placed upon the amount of subsidy where, in the opinion of the Government, the needs involved relate to Imperial communication; for the first object of a subsidy is political. Fast mail-steamers of any nation follow the lines of great commercial traffic, and promote trade, whether they are directly subsidized for that purpose or not. In these days of doctrinaire theory, and in order to appear to conform to it, the maxim is too often ignored that aid to postal communication and benefit to trading interests cannot be entirely dissociated. They are mutually auxiliary, and a subsidy to one of these objects is largely a subsidy to the other, however much it may be disguised or labelled as separate and exclusive. The fact is very relevant in considering the value of mail subsidies to merchant shipping, and at the same time shows that it would be foolish to cut down mail subsidies in obedience to a theory, merely on the ground that they gave indirect help to our merchant fleet. Nor can the use of merchant ships in time of war be overlooked. The United States very effectively commissioned the St. Paul and other vessels of the America Line during the Spanish-American War in 1898. If, however, the British Admiralty is satisfied that it can build thoroughly efficient ships more economically than it can subsidize the mercantile marine for Admiralty requirements, it seems likely that merchant ships may in future have little use in time of war except so far as they are employed to carry food-supplies. In