The huge British investments for the development of countries overseas were among the most damaging losses in two world wars. As the nation slowly recovered its economic health in the post-war years, overseas investment was encouraged by successive governments. Many Commonwealth officials say that, although private borrowing for development has been encouraged, much more could be done. The Capital Issues Committee, an independent group of seven men experienced in finance, commerce, and industry, approved in 1953 to applications for the investment of £40,000,000, or about $112,000,000, for Commonwealth development. The next year the figure rose to £48,000,000, or about $134,000,000. Compare this with the annual net investment overseas of about $504,000,000 in the years 1951-3. Evidently the Australians and New Zealanders have cause for complaint. In contrast to commercial ties that transform credit in London into new factories in western Australia, there is the emotional tie mentioned earlier. The Crown's mysterious power to draw peoples as dissimilar as the Australian cattleman and the Brighton clerk into a community of patriotic loyalty cannot be denied. Whether in the next decade or so the same sort of connection can be established between the Crown and such sensitive newer members of the Commonwealth as India and Ceylon is one of the most delicate questions facing British statecraft. A host of other institutions--some official, others the work of private individuals captured by the Commonwealth conception--strive to keep the relations between Britain and the Commonwealth countries happy and firm. In such dissimilar fields as the theater, literature, and sport there is much more contact among the countries of the Commonwealth and Empire than Americans realize. A British rugby football team tours Australia or South Africa, a West Indian cricket team visits Britain. British theatrical companies still make the long but financially rewarding trip to play in Australia and New Zealand. British authors tirelessly roam the provinces of Canada or India, discoursing at length upon the merits of the mother tongue and its literature. Many young Conservative Members of Parliament are convinced that the Commonwealth is the great twentieth-century instrument for maintaining and extending British prestige. They see it expanded from its present form to include the Scandinavian countries and others in a world confederation that will be not _a_ third force in the world but _the_ third force. They do not, however, discount the problems that plague the Commonwealth now.