HOW WAR WOULD INTENSIFY POVERTY 55 



We must not forget in this connexion that we are a 

 nation of free traders, and hold that nothing must ever 

 be allowed to interfere with the sacred and inviolable 

 rights of free and unrestricted intercourse between 

 buyer and seller, or with the natural operation of the 

 law of supply and demand. 



We stand for the principles of absolute freedom in 

 all commercial transactions, and it may well be asked, 

 who is to stop the operations of an army of secret agents 

 who would be let loose on the world's corn markets so7ne 

 time before war is actually declared? 



Are we so foolish, so blind as to believe that the Power False Belief 

 or Powers we wage war with do not know our weak insular 

 places as well as we do? And do we suppose that they Security 

 will not strike hard at the weakest points in our armour 

 of defence before they attack us in our strongest? Do we 

 fondly believe they are so ignorant of the game of!war as 

 not to know that the surest way to victory is by starving 

 us into submission, and if we so believe, are we to hug 

 these fond but fatal fancies to our hearts, even to our 

 own destruction? Will nothing stir the mass of inertia, 

 that terrible lethargy bom of false beliefs in the invio- 

 lability of our insular security, that robs us of virility 

 and renders us flabby and nerveless? And are we 

 for ever to do nothing but sneer at the idea of 

 foreign invasion and scoff at all attempts to make our- 

 selves so strong, independent and self-supporting, as to 

 render successful invasion wellnigh hopeless? Are we 

 never to put ourselves in that position which will so 

 neutralise the evil effects of war as to result in neither 

 permanent injury nor disaster to us as a nation? 



