F. — ECONOMICS. 121 



War of 1914-18, for we have not yet had it. But it is coming. More 

 certainly, I am inchnecl to beheve, in the United States than in Eng- 

 land; but pretty certainly here also. 1 say more certainly in the United 

 States because her position bears most resemblance to that of England 

 in 1815-17. Consider that position. What before the war was, on 

 the balance, a debtor country has become a creditor country. That 

 creditor is equipped to export both raw materials and manufactures — 

 iron and steel goods particularly — on a huge scale. It is true she is a 

 heavy importer of some foods, such as sugar, coffee, and tea, and of 

 certain raw materials, such as rubber, timber, and wool. But, owing 

 to her tariff system and her general policy, she is reluctant to take many 

 things which her debtors have to offer. Her recent ' diy ' policy, for 

 example, has shut her markets to one of France's most valuable 

 exports, an export with which France has always been in the habit 

 of paying her creditor's. Already, I notice, American business men 

 are beginning to point out what English business men stated clearly 

 ill a famous document, the Petition of tfie London Merchants, a 

 century ago — that the country which will not buy, neither shall it sell. 

 This was the most solid of all free-trade arguments in the early nine- 

 teenth century, and it has lost none of its force. No doubt America 

 is, and will be, glad to take part payment in gold, just as England 

 was in 1814-16. But that is not a permanent solution. If she remains 

 a creditor nation — and there is no present reason to think that she 

 will not — she must in time arrange to take more goods from outside. 

 Her political processes, however, are slow; and it seems unhkely that 

 she will have adjusted her policy before the post-war slump is upon 

 her. 



The United Kingdom, which, on the whole, still takes freely what 

 its customers have to offer it, is in a better position, provided its 

 customers can go on offering. This may prove an important proviso. 

 Customers who have been little hurt or even helped by the war — Spain, 

 perhaps, or Egypt, or India, or New Zealand — should continue good 

 buyers. But the uncertainty gives cause for anxious thought in the 

 case of llie war-damaged nations, allied and ex-enemy. Modern financial 

 and commercial organisation has postponed the critical moment in 

 a way that was impossible a century ago. When Europe was hungry 

 in 1816 there were not food surpluses available anywhere on the earth, 

 nor shipping enough on the seas, nor means of transport good enough 

 on land, to relieve her need. If, per h)ipossihiIe, there had been all 

 these things, there would have been no country or group of business 

 men anywhere ready to give her the necessary credit on a large scale. 

 The Rothschilds, a young firm in those days, did something. They 

 advanced money to a few German princes to buy corn for their people 

 at the Baltic ports, for there was some corn to spare from Poland and 

 Russia. But the huge food-financing operations of 1918-20 would have 

 been as unthinkable as the actual handling of the foodstuffs would 

 have been impossible. Had two harvests hke that of 1816 come in 

 suc-cession, there would have been famine and food riots everywhere, 

 past hope of cure. 



Similarly modern finance is postponing the critical moment for the 



