An economic problem is the filtration of American capital into the Commonwealth. The British recognize the enormous potential of American overseas investment, and they wonder what would happen to their position in a Commonwealth country where the United States invested heavily and purchased products with a free hand. The knowledge that the United States could, if it wished, literally buy out the Commonwealth is a patriotic incentive for greater British investment. Two political problems are South Africa and Ceylon. The National Party in South Africa is moving toward the establishment of a republic and the progressive weakening of political and economic ties with Britain. Complete independence of the Crown and the Commonwealth probably is the ultimate South African aim. This would be a grievous blow to the strength, both economic and political, of the Commonwealth. Ceylon has shown signs of moving in the same direction. One of the first actions of the government of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, the leader of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, was to ask the British to leave the great naval base at Trincomalee. This was a severe shock to the British and a damaging blow to the position of the Western world in the Indian Ocean. At the subsequent Commonwealth Conference an agreement that allowed the British to remain temporarily was negotiated. But the restlessness of Ceylon within the Commonwealth and the desire of many of its leading politicians to divest themselves of all connections, cultural as well as political, with the British are a bad omen for the future. The British attitude toward the Commonwealth and Empire is a curious mixture of indifference and interest, snobbery and friendship, ignorance and knowledge. But the general approach has improved greatly since before the war. The British know they need their friends and markets overseas, and the old brusque approach to Commonwealth and Empire problems has changed. So has the social attitude. Not long before the war an elderly and aristocratic lady told me she always "considered Americans as colonials." She thought she had paid us a compliment. Today such a remark would not be made. The idea of a world-wide Commonwealth is imaginative and attractive. But the efforts to sell it to the people of Britain, with the exception of the almost daily exhortations of Lord Beaverbrook's newspapers, are depressingly feeble. The English Speaking Union and other organizations are devoted to the cause of strengthening Commonwealth relations, but such organizations usually preach to the converted. The great mass of public opinion has yet to be stirred. The British of all classes are much more likely to be moved by events in France than by events in Canada or Nigeria.