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PREFACE

fresh vigour to the German advocates of an economic Middle Europe by enabling them to represent their scheme as a necessary defence against the economic warfare already announced by the Allies.

Another obvious vice of any binding economic arrangement made now by the Allies for operation after the war is that it impairs our freedom of action at the Peace Settlement for the all-important work of placing international relations upon a better basis of security. No League of Nations, such as President Wilson and Sir Edward Grey (to name but two of many important supporters of this plan) still contemplate as possible, could come into existence if, at the close of the military conflict, the two belligerent groups had already committed themselves to a permanent war of commerce.

These considerations give the gravest significance to the concluding paragraph of the Paris Report, in which "the representatives of the Allied Governments undertake to recommend their respective Governments

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