14 THE COST OF NATIONAL SECURITY 



3. Through the reduction of the national credit by 

 the necessity of paying such large amounts, 

 which are materially increased in war time, to 

 foreign producers. 



In our national policy we have hitherto tacitly 

 accepted these dangers ; we have worked upon the 

 assumption that it is better for the British Islands to 

 develop as an industrial and trading community, ex- 

 changing the elaborated products of our manufacturing 

 skill for the more primitive articles of food and raw 

 materials, because we thus turned to better profit the 

 labour of our dense population. We have trusted to 

 the Navy to protect the transit of the necessary food, 

 and in that expectation we have not been deceived ; 

 but we have not foreseen that the physical power 

 to continue importations is only one, and not perhaps 

 the most important, part of the problem of national 

 security ; the further financial question of the con- 

 tinued ability of the nation to pay for such food 

 during a long war has only now been brought home 

 to us. 



We are thereby forced to ask ourselves whether a 

 review of this national policy has not become necessary 

 — a review that will take war and its revealed conse- 

 quences into account and will so reshape the agricul- 

 tural system of the country as to remove or reduce 

 materially the dangers that arise from our great depend- 

 ence upon foreign supplies of food. If it is possible to 

 produce the bulk of our requirements at home we shall 

 thereby effect a further insurance of the safety of the 

 nation — an insurance that is additional to and inde- 

 pendent of the Navy, which assists the Navy in its 



