haken an article in our economic faith which taught us
that specialization was a cause of so much more good than evil, that its
development by the free spreading of our capital all over the world,
wherever the demand for it gave most profit to the owner, was a tendency
to be encouraged, or at least to be left free to work out its will. This
was true enough to be a platitude as long as we could rely on peace. Our
capital went forth and fertilized the world, and out of its growing
produce the world enriched us. As the world developed its productive
power, its goods poured into us, as the great free mart where all men
were welcome to sell their wares. These goods came in exchange for our
goods and services, and the more we bought the more we sold. When other
nations took to dealing direct with one another, they wanted our capital
to finance the business, and our ships to carry the goods. The world as
a whole could not grow in wealth without enriching the people that was
the greatest buyer and seller, the greatest moneylender and the greatest
carrier. It was all quite sound, apart from the danger depicted by Dr.
Bowley, as long as we had peace, or as long as the wars that happened
were sufficiently restricted in their area and effect. But now we have
seen that war may happen on such a scale as to make the interchange of
products between nations a source of grave weakness to those who
practise it, if it means that they are thereby in danger of finding
themselves at war with the providers of things that they need for
subsistence or for defence.

Another lesson that the war has taught us is that modern warfare
enormously increases the cost of carriage by sea, because it shuts up in
neutral harbours the merchant ships of the powers that are weaker on
the sea, and makes huge calls, for transport purposes, on those of the
powers which are in the ascendant on the water. This increase in the
cost of sea carriage adds to the cost of all goods that come by sea, and
is a particularly important item in the bill that we, as an island
people, have to pay for the luxury of war. It is true that much of the
high price of freight goes into the pockets of our shipowners, but they,
being busy with transport work for the Government, cannot take nearly so
much advantage of it as the shipmasters of neutral countries.

The economic argument, then, that it pays best to make and grow things
where they can best be made and grown remains just as true