Free Republic

Just last week, the shareholders of P&O, that venerable relic of the British Empire, agreed to sell their company to a group called Dubai Ports World, for $6.8 billion. DP World won a bidding war with another company from a developing country, Temasek Holdings of Singapore. Pacific & Oriental Steam Navigation was created in the 1830s and, by 1868, had the largest steamship fleet in the world. But the days of Kipling and Maugham (who, by the way, wrote a wonderful short story called "P&O") are over. Today, four-fifths of P&O's revenues come not from ships but from ports. The...