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THE NEW PROTECTIONISM

little knot of pushful merchants or bankers in each country, with or without the assistance of their Foreign Office, are the actual contestants.

If this is the normal modern situation, it is easy to understand how the military policy of States, the preparations for war, the conduct of war, and the sequelæ of war, play into the hands of Protectionists. In a dangerous world, where a nation is exposed to have its foreign trade cut off during war, common prudence, it is held, must impel the State to make arrangements enabling the nation to be as self-sufficing as possible in supplies of the requisites of civil existence and military use. A protective tariff is advocated as a chief instrument for achieving this "national economy." So Protection is urged, not as an instrument of national wealth, but of national defence. In continental Europe this consideration has been paramount in modern times, when, with the growth of population and improved facilities of transport, the people of one country might

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