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National Power and Prosperity.
By CONRAD GILL, M.A. With an Introduction by Professor GEORGE UNWIN. Cloth, 4s. 6d. net.
The study of economic history provides many facts and principles of the greatest value to all who are trying to unravel the causes of the present crisis. It shows, for example, how largely the policy of German statesmen has been guided by a mistaken view of the growth of English trade; how they have deliberately tried to copy the policy which they believed to have produced the commercial greatness of England. It shows, too, how far the same policy of "Mercantilism," which was in force all over Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, has determined international relations down to the present time, and how far it has helped to produce the great wars of the last three hundred years. This essay on "National Power and Prosperity" describes the Mercantile System both in theory and in practice, and shows its good features and its many defects. The book bears closely on vital questions of the day, especially in the chapters on the survivals of Mercantilism in Germany and elsewhere; the economic and non-economic causes of warfare; the political power of the State and the welfare of Society; and the final chapter, which attempts a cautious prophecy.
European International Relations.
By J. A. MURRAY MACDONALD, M.F. Cloth, 2s. 6d. net.
The idea of national freedom and independence, which has recently prevailed in Europe, assumes that each State has, or has a right to have, within itself all the requirements, moral and material, of a complete and self-sufficing life. To consent to be dependent for any of these requirements on its neighbours would be to consent to derogate, to the extent of the dependence, from its own unrestricted freedom of action, and to deny the absoluteness of its own sovereignty.
If this idea is accepted, there never can be any real community of interest between nations, nor any permanent peace. So long as two or more sovereign States exist there will be a struggle for supremacy between them, till at last one all-powerful State will subdue to itself all the other States of Europe, and ultimately also of the world. This is one of the main questions studied in Mr. Macdonald's important work,
T. FISHER UNWIN, Ltd., 1, ADELPHI TERRACE, LONDON.