SECTION F.—ECONOMIC SCIENCE AND STATISTICS. 
ECONOMIG NATIONALISM AND 
INTERNATIONAL TRADE 
ADDRESS BY 
PROF. J. G. SMITH, M.A., 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
Tue Council of the Association has recently suggested that the sections 
should endeavour in their proceedings at the annual meeting to appeal 
occasionally to the interests of an audience somewhat wider than that 
whose main interests lie in the purely technical aspects of the sciences 
studied. This clearly prescribes for me the general field of my Presidential 
Address to this Section this year ; and, at a time when serious dislocation 
in normal international trading relations is the major factor hindering 
_ economic improvement and preventing a return even of that measure of 
prosperity which the world enjoyed before the depression entered on its 
acutest phase, the part of that field calling for special attention is not 
difficult to choose. This is the growth or accentuation of Economic 
Nationalism, or Self-Sufficiency, Autarchy, Isolation or Insulation, 
_ undoubtedly one of the most powerful of the disturbing influences now 
at work in the economic sphere. It is with it that my address will mainly 
be concerned. 
r. 
Economic self-sufficiency is no new phenomenon. The tendency to 
national exclusiveness is as old as human nature itself and it by no means 
calls for unrestricted condemnation. Indeed, in spheres other than the 
5 economic, nationalism and national movements have made no small 
' contribution ‘to the general progress and the happiness of mankind ; and 
’ 
we could contemplate, if not always with unfeigned admiration at least 
with a considerable degree of equanimity, the diversity in civilisation, in 
language and in culture which is due to the multiplication of small 
countries and to the determination of national groups to resist by every 
possible means attempts at assimilation by larger and by more powerful 
peoples. 
Generally, when national movements arise they spring from motives 
other than economic; and in earlier times purely economic weapons 
were not of importance in the struggles which ensued. ‘This, of course, 
was due not to reluctance to employ any weapon which came to hand, 
but rather to the fact that the economic sword had not really been tested 
and there was as yet no ground for confidence that it would prove effective. 
In modern times, however, it has, or is thought to have, become indis- 
pensable. It may, therefore, be worth while to consider some of the 
