raining a rise in prices, the old official "salariat" is likely
to be obstructive to any such innovations. It is the resistance of spurs
and red tabs to military innovations over again. This is the resistance
of quills and red tape. On the other hand the organisation of Britain
for war has "officialised" a number of industrial leaders, and created
a large body of temporary and adventurous officials. They may want
to carry on into peace production the great new factories the war has
created. At the end of the war, for example, every belligerent country
will be in urgent need of cheap automobiles for farmers, tradesmen, and
industrial purposes generally, America is now producing such automobiles
at a price of eighty pounds. But Europe will be heavily in debt to
America, her industries will be disorganised, and there will therefore
be no sort of return payment possible for these hundreds of thousands of
automobiles. A country that is neither creditor nor producer cannot be
an importer. Consequently though those cheap tin cars may be stacked
as high as the Washington Monument in America, they will never come to
Europe. On the other hand the great shell factories of Europe will be
standing idle and ready, their staffs disciplined and available, for
conversion to the new task. The imperative common sense of the position
seems to be that the European governments should set themselves straight
away to out-Ford Ford, and provide their own people with cheap road
transport.

But here comes in the question whether this common-sense course is
inevitable. Suppose the mental energy left in Europe after the war is
insufficient for such a constructive feat as this. There will certainly
be the obstruction of official pedantry, the hold-up of this vested
interest and that, the greedy desire of "private enterprise" to exploit
the occasion upon rather more costly and less productive lines, the
general distrust felt by ignorant and unimaginative people of a new way
of doing things. The process after all may not get done in the obviously
wise way. This will not mean that Europe will buy American cars. It will
be quite unable to buy American cars. It will be unable to make anything
that America will not be able to make more cheaply for itself. But it
will mean that Europe will go on without cheap cars, that is to say
it will go on a more sluggishly and clumsily and wastefully at a lower
economic level. Hampered transport means hampered producti