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PREFACE

economic intercourse as brings "dependence," it can only be compassed by methods of State preference or State boycott, which constitute a radical departure from the accepted economic policy of Great Britain. Whatever were the specific methods adopted to secure the object, it would have two economically and politically disastrous results. In the first place, by narrowing the area of our free external markets, it would diminish the total gains of British industry and commerce, and render more precarious the livelihood of a population and a trade dependent for existence upon large and assured access to varied sources of overseas supplies. Secondly, by breaking Europe into two nominally independent but really hostile and competing economic systems, it would foster conflicts in all parts of the world, maintain and feed the bitter memories of this war, stimulate the maintenance and growth of armaments, and render another war inevitable.

Moreover, the first aggressive step in this

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