PRACTICES OF OTHER COUNTRIES 5 



means of national prosperity, by which she must 

 succeed or fail. Her incentive was a spirited and 

 absorbing determination to rise above the sorrows of 

 war, and reconstruct her fortunes in spite of the loss 

 of her provinces, through raising to a higher power 

 her natural means of trade and subsistence. How 

 she triumphed every agriculturist knows. 



Yet again, Germany resolved to become a virtually 

 self-supporting country for the purposes of the war 

 which for many years she planned. Her soil and her 

 climate are less favourable than ours, but twenty 

 years ago she made up her mind (as Mr. T. H. Middle- 

 ton of the Board of Agriculture has pointed out in a 

 Memorandum which will be referred to again later) 

 not to import food, but to grow it. The resolve was 

 made good — ^made good marvellously. Germany's 

 peculiar incentive was an engrossing military purpose. 



Now, it must be noted that there is in these ex- 

 amples no question of any special system of economics 

 producing of its own accord the desired result. Den- 

 mark is a Free Trade country ; Germany and the 

 United States are Protectionist. Yet it may be well 

 to remember Lord Morley's reservation that the 

 United States are a world in themselves, and that a 

 hundred million people who engage in Free Trade with 

 one another do not form a Protectionist community 

 in any ordinary sense. This warning is recalled here 

 only to emphasise the fact that we must put aside 

 all idea of abstract economic principles, whether Pro- 

 tectionist or Free Trade, being in themselves decisive 

 when we are looking for what is beyond and what ia 

 greater in the human motives which achieve industrial 

 2 



