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 trades would stand to suffer if their costs were raised without a similar rise of costs in their national competitors. An instance is the Lancashire cotton trade, competing over a section of its market with countries like Japan and India where labour costs are much lower. The main body of our export trade in textiles, machinery, chemicals, and coal would come under this same disability, until a reliable international co-operation, which at present seems impossible, were attained. But by many governments the substitution of a fuller intra-national trade for foreign trade is not deemed feasible. For certain foreign foods and raw materials are essential either for the maintenance of the population and its manufacturing industries, or, still more urgently at the present time, for war-materials to which all other economic considerations must be sacrificed. The new competition in armaments thus strangely interferes with the economic self-sufficiency which is a professed ideal of nationalism. Indeed, a definite clash is seen in several countries between this genuinely humanist policy and the growing demands of the “defence” services upon the national exchequer and the employment of labour. Where dictatorships or oligarchies are in control, the tendency of competitors in armaments is to absorb an increasing share of productivity, and to keep down both wages and social services to the lowest level consistent with military efficiency and popular subservience. The success which has attended