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 concerted motive except the perilous mutual interests of the elect, how can these refrain from exercising the international domination to which nationally we submit?

We heap our goods and services on one side of our national scale: they own and control the accepted international weight on the other. They would be fools if they did not shift it; and they are not fools. It is we who are fools to sanction such a method of measuring national value. We watch our loaded pan go up magnificently and come down with a thud. It may be customary; but it is not what we can call scientific.

An international medium of exchange is comprehensible—and this, owing to the costly purging of war, is all we have today in gold—but an international measure of value is a myth.

It was Henry George who stated that scientific law should still hold good beyond the reach of the astronomer’s telescope; and while this gives such law a very wide range it would be difficult to disprove his contention, even with a more powerful telescope.

In face of this logical insistence upon the universality of “law,” it may appear that the dynamic theory of economic value put forward is almost parochial in scope, since it is frankly coupled with the assertion that there is no possible application of scientific method in the international field. The reason for such an assertion is that internationally the free flow and interchange of human effort is wilfully blocked. In the hopelessly-picketted international field, while there is great scope for the diplomatist, who is a shrewd gambler in arbitraries, there is no place for the economic scientist.

Revolution is shattering, or evolution thawing out, the ancient areas of privilege; and the day may come when all nations can operate under a common code of economic order. But long before that day basic economic law will be found to be applicable within any political area where, through freedom and order, the spontaneous expression of human effort is provided for. It will be discovered, in spite of political idiosyncrasies, such as the prohibition of vodka or claret, that human effort is the prime phase of economic value, that self-imposed order