gured in Mr. John Lane's catalogue at the end of the book.]

[Footnote 20: _Matyas Diak_ of Budapest.]

Sec. 6

Trade in Time of Peace

It would not however be correct to infer that the sacrifice of national
welfare to commercial manoeuvres is a condition peculiar to war.
Modern commerce is essentially an art; the art of making people pay more
than they are worth for things which they do not require. And it is with
all the selfishness of the artist that it performs its usual operations.
Among all the unpublished detail of modern life hardly any class of
facts is more disquieting than that of commercial procedure and
achievement. The subject is too large to be reviewed in less than a
volume; and I can do no more here than suggest a few instances that
might be acquired by anyone who devotes his time to not reading the
daily papers.

The distribution and exchange of commodities are necessary to the
existence of the State; so necessary that it might be supposed that
their regulation would be one of the primary functions of government.
Proper systems of distribution and exchange correspond to the digestive
processes of the body, on which depend the proper nutrition of all the
parts and the real prosperity of the State as a whole; yet any
comprehensive plan for their control is still regarded as the most
unattainable dream of Utopia, and they are left to carry on as best they
can in the interstices of private acquisitiveness. National well-being
is not to be measured by mere volume of trade, which is the means and
not the essence of prosperity;[22] and prosperity can certainly never
exist when equitable distribution is hindered by a sort of fatty
degeneration of capitalism. But trade in itself is a necessary aliment
of the State, and its abuses ought not to be beyond remedy.

A few of these abuses are fairly obvious without a full inquiry, and
may be illustrated here because their existence in time of peace may
throw light on the operations of trade in belligerent states, and
indirectly, by suggesting a few of the results of war, may lead us to
some of its motives and occasions. Such abuses may be most easily
identified in opposition to the national rights which they infringe.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: So in Germany the fixing of maximum prices for pigs and
potatoes was immediately followed by an almost complete withdrawal from
the market of potatoes and pigs--the German farmers refused to sell
except at their ow