Page:The Great problems of British statesmanship.djvu/15

Rh documents of the highest importance which will not be found elsewhere.

Economic policy should be based not upon theory, but upon experience; not upon fancy, but upon fact. In considering the problem of developing the prosperity of Great Britain and of the Empire, of paying off the war debt, and of improving the lot of the workers, I have availed myself of the lessons afforded by England's war with Republican and Napoleonic France and by the American Civil War. Both were proportionately about as costly as the present struggle seems likely to prove. Both were followed not by industrial collapse and financial ruin, as was believed by many at the time, but by unprecedented economic development and boundless prosperity. I have endeavoured to show that the Great War, far from impoverishing Great Britain and the British Empire, should greatly enrich them, provided a wise economic policy in accordance with historical experience is pursued. The exhaustive and authoritative figures given in support of that contention will be new to most readers and should prove of the highest interest to financiers, business men, and others.

Government, rightly considered, is not a pastime, but a business. Like every business, it has its rules, which may be learned from those who have been most successful in the science and art of directing public affairs. National organisation and administration, like economic policy, should be based, not upon abstract principles, which may prove inapplicable, nor upon historic precedents, which may be misleading, but upon universal experience. In considering the inefficiency of democratic government as revealed by the War and the necessary reform of Great Britain's national organisation, I have availed myself of the views of the greatest statesmen and administrators and the soundest thinkers of all times from Aristotle, Isocrates, Thucydides, and Polybius to Cardinal Richelieu, the elder Pitt, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Alexander Hamilton, and Bismarck. The numerous quotations given