Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/202

190 In my belief, both Free Trade of the laissez-faire type and Protection of the predatory type are policies of Empire, and both make for War. The British and the Germans took seats in express trains on the same line, but in opposite directions. Probably from about 1908 a collision was inevitable; there comes a moment when the brakes have no longer time to act. The difference in British and German responsibility may perhaps be stated thus: the British driver started first, and ran carelessly, neglecting the signals, whereas the German driver deliberately strengthened and armoured his train to stand the shock, put it on the wrong line, and at the last moment opened his throttle valves.

The Going Concern is, in these days, the great Economic Reality; it was used criminally by the Germans, and blindly by the British. The Bolsheviks must have forgotten that it existed.