Balkan War;
and the unparalleled boom in American trade during the present war is
another obvious example. This suggests at once that the benefit
occasioned by war is not a national benefit, diffused vertically through
every class of the belligerent nation; but a class benefit diffused as
it were horizontally through the commercial strata of all nations within
supplying distance of the centre of disturbance. On the other hand, of
course, the immediate local demand is stronger than the demand
communicated to remoter markets and more easily supplied; in other words
the commercial class of the belligerent nation are more immediately and
more intensely benefited by the state of war than the same classes of
neighbouring nations, although in war as in peace the commercial classes
of every nation are one.[46] Also the outbreak of war, even if it does
not entirely sever a country from foreign sources of supply, is bound to
cause a certain dislocation; if communications are not altogether
interrupted they are more difficult and uncertain than in normal times;
so that the trade of the belligerent country is always given a greater
impetus than that of its neutral neighbours, and in such cases a
particular industry which has been threatened by the competition of
foreign imports may be actually rescued from extinction. Even the
temporary dislocation of trade is a benefit to trade in the nation at
war; for it enables existing stocks to be sold at exaggerated
prices.[47]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 44: From this it follows incidentally that a high tariff is of
no advantage to the community as a whole, but only to a particular
section of the community. For the idea that it will benefit the whole
community is based on the assumption that it is possible to divert a
particular sort of foreign import; actually the tariff will not exclude
the import if there is a natural demand for it, but it will provide an
excuse for every dealer wholesale or retail to increase his profit on
the article taxed by about double the amount of the tax; i.e. if an
imported article pays a duty of sixpence, the price to the consumer of
all such articles whether imported or home-made will be raised a
shilling.]

[Footnote 45: In the July, 1914, issue of the _Asiatic Review_, to which
I have already referred.]

[Footnote 46: I need hardly say that in speaking of the commercial class
I do not include its instrument the workers. The international Socialist
movement