WAR AND TRADE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 153, 26 December 1914, Page 6

WAR AND TRADE

The total stoppage of Germany's direct foreign trade, apart from the thin stream which still manage* to trickle through neutral channels, has been the theme of many writers in the press both in England and America. Here, they say, is the opportunity to capture Germany "a trade. The British Board of Trade. has taken unusually active steps to place all the information at its disposal before British manufacturers and merchants. Trade Commissioners in. the various Dominions, including New Zealand, have sent circular letters out among the business people of the community, urging them to buy from the Old Country whatever they previously bought from Germany. America has made even greater preparations to acquire the foreign trade not only of Germany, but of all the nations now belligerent, including Britain. It may not be a very edifying spectacle, this scramble for spoils, but N business is business, and business, according to a great American commercial authority, is war. If there is trade, to be captured, then by all means let us capture it. The question is reduced to what trade and where and how can it bo captured. The ficures of the comparative progress of Britain and Germany in the foreign market during the past decade havo been quoted again a,nd again, and it seems to be assumed that, if Germany is cut off from this trade, the trade will remain in the Fame amount as, /say, last year, to be picked tip by Britain or America, whichever is first in the field. South America- is the classic example for both English, and American writers. In this great Southern continent, into which the savings of the Old World have been poured like a life-giving stream in hugo quantities, Britain still holds the lion's share of the trade, just as she holds the lion's share of the capital invested there. But Germany, in tho years immediately preceding the war, had been making astomshing progress a-nd increasing her business at a far greater ratio than her rivals could show. Now she . has lost that trade, and America and Britain arc both looking to export, goods to sorriething like the same value that Germany exported in the last year of peace. Do they look in vain? We are compelled to believe that so far as the immediate future is concerned they look in vain not. only to South America but to nearly every other country. Tc .ssume that trade will continue in war of the same dimensions as it does in peace is utterly fallacious from an. economic point of view. The only war that can ever improve trade permanently is the conquest of a backward and unprogressive country by a progressive nation. Thus the occupation of Egypt and the conquest of the Soudan in a series of s>mall wars Tunning over years -has permanently added to the trade of tho world. So indeed, more or less, have all the operations of the European Powers in Africa. They have established trade where there was no trade. Tho British in India have created one of tho greatest trade markets in the world, and generally wherever the West penetrates the East there is an accession to the world's wealth by increased facilities for trade. But when the very heart of the world's commerce is in tho grip of war, there is not only no gain, but a stupendous loss. The trade Great Britain and America havo already lost on the Continent of Europe itself could not be made up by the capture ,of all Germany's foreign trade in, the Ijioyday of nea^e prosperity, War among

civilised nations is a sheer economic loss, whatever the spiritual and moral gains may be. The conflict in Europe is destroying the capital that in times of peaco goes out to fertilise and develop the newer countries— Canado, the United States, Mexico, and the whole of Central and South America, South Africa and Australasia. There is depression throughout America, South Africa is depressed, India is depressed, Australia is feeling the pinch, and No Zealand, though up to the present the one coun>try which has suffered the least from tho war, is bound to have her turn. A great European war is like a tremendous ■conflagration destroying a city. It may be good for the builders— the armament firms And others supplying material of war in the present case — but it is sheer loss to the community as a whole. When the position is summed up, it will in all probability be found that the whole trade of the world during the immediate future will fall to a greater extent than all Germany's peace trade would balance, and that in the long run there will be no real trade to capture. All this, moreover, quite apart from the fact that no trade is "captured" ; it is the fruit of years of slow and careful building. Germany increased her trade by the genius which is an infinite capacity for taking pains. To keep anything we can "capture" will require an exercise of the same capacity. But all that can be done to make up for the losses of war is harder work, longer hours, greater application, and a more frugal standard of living. All else is dreams. The prodigal son, having gone through his money, had to come down to the husgs of the swine. War is the prodigal squandering of tho national patrimony, from an economical standpoint, and the only way for the world to recover from war is by the same course of life the individual has to practise when he has spent his money and has to begin the world again.