tter world order. For, though those bonds of common
interest broke under the strain of war, the confusion in which we find
ourselves without them is itself a terrible testimony to their value.
The enforced sundering of ordinary trade relations between members of
different countries has taught two clear lessons. The first is this:
that hardly any civilized nation is or can be economically independent
in respect to essential supplies or industries. There is no European
country that does not rely for the subsistence of its inhabitants upon
supplies of goods and raw materials from foreign lands, mostly from
countries outside the European continent. While Britain both leaned
more heavily upon other countries and contributed most to other
countries from her surplus produce, every other country, in larger or
less degree--great countries such as France, Germany, Austria, Italy,
little ones like Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and
Denmark--were increasingly dependent upon outside sources for their
livelihood. It is true that there remained a very few great backward
countries, such as Russia and China, where a life of economic isolation
was possible had they been willing to dispense with the higher products
of civilized industry and with the fertilizing streams of capital
without which progress is impossible. No civilized European country was
self-sufficing in the vital factors of a productive and progressive
civilization--food, raw materials, machinery, fuel, transport, finance,
and adequate supplies of skilled labor. The services which countries
near or distant rendered to one another were becoming constantly more
numerous, more complex, and more urgent. The obstructions and stoppages
of war has driven home the lesson painfully to the inhabitants of every
European country, belligerent or neutral. What lesson? That we have
erred in permitting ourselves to grow dependent on the industry,
goodwill, and intercourse of other nations, and that we should endeavor
to hark back to an earlier economic state of national independence?
Well, there are even in Britain rhetorical politicians who speak of the
necessity of retaining all "key" or "essential" industries within their
national control--who propose to reverse the tide of social evolution
by some flimsy apparatus of tariffs and subsidies. This is impossible.
The war has left the European peoples, one and all, more than ever
dependent for their economic livelihood upon one a