Chapter II: (pp. 61-80)

THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE

The trans-national processes which enabled Europe to support itself before the War were based mainly on private exchanges prompted by the expectation of individual advantage. They were not dependent upon political power. (The fifteen millions for whom German soil could not provide lived by trade with countries over which Germany had no political control, as a similar number of British live by similar non-political means.)

The old individualist economy has been largely destroyed by the State Socialism introduced for war purposes: the nation, taking over individual enterprise, became trader and manufacturer in increasing degree. The economic clauses of the Treaty, if enforced, must prolong this tendency, rendering a large measure of such Socialism permanent.

The change may be desirable. But if co-operation must in future be less as between individuals for private advantage, and much more as between _nations_, governments acting in an economic capacity, the political emotions of nationalisation will play a much larger role in the economic processes of Europe. If to Nationalist hostilities as we have known them in the past is to be added the commercial rivalry of nations now converted into traders and capitalists, we are likely to have not a less but a more quarrelsome world, unless the fact of interdependence is much more vividly realised than in the past.