Foreign News: Rescue

For months the Cunard Line has been explaining that the big obstacle to constructing a monster British speed rival to Germany’s Bremen and Europa was the matter of insurance. Insurance companies in the U. S. and Britain, boat-shy since the mysterious $3,000,000 fire on the Europa (TIME, April 8, 1929), were either too poor or too nervous to write a $30,000,000 policy. Last week the British treasury and the Board of Trade came to the rescue. They agreed to underwrite that margin of insurance on the great Cunarder’s construction which cannot be accommodated in the ordinary market, not as a government subsidy but as an unemployment measure.