I AN IRISH DEFENCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 68, 17 September 1936, Page 14

I AN IRISH DEFENCE

advanced industrially, they conveyed raw materials from one side of the earth to another, manufactured them, and reconveyed them to equally distant parts. This, of course, meant a great volume of international trade, and for those countries that depended on this trade to any degree its diminution had been more or less a calamity.

OF ECONOMIC NATIONALISM

SPEECH "AT 'GENEVA

T~ But what of the countries that were A most interesting speech at the undeveloped industrially, or even International Labour Conference, when agriculturally? He was thinking of his the discussion of the director's report own country from a naturally selfish ... „ , ~, . _ point of view. Efforts to solve the took place, was that of Mr. Ferguson, £ risis of unemp i oyment in countries of Irish Free State Government dele- this type had led to increased home gate because, unlike most of the production, and in many cases the speakers in the discussion, he made a smaller, undeveloped countries had defence of economic nationalism, says increased their total volume of producthe "Manchester Guardian." Mr. Fer-, tion.; He would suggest that the total guson recalled that the director, in his volume of production might be a betreport, had said "that international tertest of world conditions than the trade was the barometer of real total volume of international trade, economic prosperity, that measures of It might even prove an economy that self-sufficiency inevitably ran counter more production should take place to all the teachings of economic reason, within easy reach of the consumer, and and that the self-sufficient ideal was it.was also possible to conceive that something economically irrational and general world prosperity might return pernicious. to what it was. in earlier years even They were, Mr. Ferguson said, though the former psak of interfamiliar at Geneva with this very national trade was never reached popular doctrine, but he suggested again. that perhaps the moment had come There were well-known and genera Iwhen the conceptions upon which ly accepted reasons in favour of disthese passages in the director's, report tributing production • throughout the were based needed re-examination, territory of a single State instead of They might prove, in the experience of concentrating it in a few highly Induscertain countries at least, that they trialised areas. State-planning on the were rather out of date or, at any part of countries that had earlier rate, that they needed restatement. been undeveloped had enabled such Mr. Ferguson said he did not wish States to correct, the faults in the to suggest that 100 per cent, self- industrial system of older States, sufficiency was either obtainable or Similarly, there were reasons in favdesirable for any country, but he did our of distributing production over a suggest that.there had been too much number of States instead of leaving it insistence on the volume of inter- to a few countries toract as the worknational trade as a test of world pros- shops of the world, perity. v Mr. Ferguson, it will' be remarked, In earlier years only a few coun- did not deal with the argument used tries were f industrially, or in some by so many speakers, in the discussion, cases agriculturally, developed, and in that economic nationalism is one of the case of those countries that were the chief causes of war.