lly giving way before the
superior economy of specialization on a basis of natural or acquired
advantages. Any reversal of this policy would be far costlier than may
at present appear, even for those countries best qualified by size and
resources to stand alone.

For it is not merely the direct sacrifice of the wider world economy of
production and exchange, the advantage of a wider over a narrower area
of free commerce, that is involved. It is the indirect perils and costs
of the policy of close nationalism or restricted economic alliances
that count heaviest. For economic nationalism means protective and
discriminative tariffs, and a conservation of national, imperial or
allied resources within a circle of favored beneficiaries. This is the
temptation held out to the British people today by the protectionist
interests working upon the animosity of the war spirit and the
sentiment of imperialism. The welding of an empire into an independent
economic system, the conservation of essential or key industries and
the safeguarding of our industries against "dumping," are the
ostensible objectives of a policy whose chief driving motive and end is
the establishment of strong industrial, commercial and financial trusts
and combinations, defended by tariff walls, and endowed with the
profits of monopoly.

There are two difficulties in such a course of action, which, though
especially urgent in the case of Britain, beset every great country
that chooses the same path, and not least, America. The first is the
fomentation of a class war, based upon divisions of interests between
capital and labor, producer and consumer, protected and unprotected
industries. The initial skirmishes of such a conflict are already
visible in every country where wages, prices, and profiteering are
burning issues. I would most earnestly appeal to thoughtful citizens in
this as in my own country to pause before heaping fuel on these fires.
For the policy of national self-sufficiency or isolation means nothing
less than this. Not merely does it strengthen the power of capitalistic
combinations and thereby incite labor unions to direct action,
blackmailing demands, and sabotage. Not merely does it let loose upon
the business world all sorts of ill-considered governmental
interferences for the fixation of prices or subsidies to consumers. It
keeps alive and feeds the habit and the spirit of strife. For it was no
accident that the great international war le