not in the least imply that a great international trade should not be done, but it should be a trade so controlled that the effect of it is always tending towards the balance aimed at, and is not accumulating, beyond hope of recovery, economic one-sidedness.
No stable League of Nations appears to me possible if any nation is allowed to practise commercial 'penetration,' for the object of that penetration is to deprive other nations of their fair share of the more skilled forms of employment, and it is inevitable that a general soreness should ensue in so far as it succeeds. Nor, to speak quite plainly, is there any great difference in result if some nations feel that they are reduced to the position of hewers and drawers owing to the industrial specialisation of another country under the régime of unrestricted Cobdenism; wherever an industry is so developed in one country that it can be content with no less than a world-market for its particular products, the economic balance of other countries tends to be upset. No important country, after this War, is going to allow itself to be deprived either of any 'key' or of any 'essential' industry.[1] By the time
- ↑ The distinction between these two terms is not always observed. Key industries are those which, although themselves relatively small, are necessary to other and much greater
