Oil from Coal

THERE is a remarkable agreement on technical points between the report of the Labour Party's Advisory Committee on Oil from Coal and that of the Falmouth Committeef. The latter, being an official committee, doubtless had access to a great deal of important material already collated, and to oral information from Government officials. The Labour Party, the inquiries of which were completed before the publication of the Falmouth report, and to which such official assistance would not be available, must have had a very arduous task in collecting and sifting so comprehensive a mass of material. The conclusions are, however, all the more valuable from having been arrived at independently since, although we are constantly being reminded that they are not infallible, there is a tendency to accept official views at their face value. The general agreement between two groups with such widely different outlooks will raise the technical and economic side of the problem of producing oil from coal out of the controversial field and enable policies to be formulated in the light of established facts.