Credulous Cunard

Automobile manufacturers often wish that they could attract the patriotic fervor to their products that shipbuilders and steamship operators do to theirs. If, for example, British Austin Motor Co.. Ltd. should be forced to suspend "Baby Austin" production the average Briton would not feel called upon to do anything about it. But last month when Cunard Line felt it necessary to stop work on its 73,000-ton No. 534, British patriots reacted as to a national calamity. Retired colonels, war widows and schoolboys sent in small sums to Cunard Line; the Government was put under pressure to offer financial assistance, and the Line promised to resume construction but named no date (TIME, Dec. 28).

Last week Prime Minister MacDonald tried to weasel out of aiding Cunard. "The trouble is not to get the Cunarder built," he declared, "but to get the com-pany to believe that when she is built she can be run with some chance of paying her way. There would be no difficulty in getting money for the building if there were any prospect of getting the interest repaid and the loans refunded."

This was indignantly denied by a Cunard official to reporters of London's Daily Express. "It is incorrect." snapped Cunard's spokesman, "to say that the com-pany do not believe that a ship of the size of the 534 could pay her way. The ships paying the best in the Atlantic service are the large ones. . . . The suspension of work was because of the inability to obtain loans in the City at reasonable rates of interest."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.