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THE NEW PROTECTIONISM

or where the sources of supply might pass under enemy control. Nor can we insure that all the plant and machinery and the processes we find it best to use in our great staple industries are home-produced. Yet most of the trades producing these materials or plant or conducting these processes are "key-industries" in the sense that they are indispensable to the final product. To hold that, by tariffs or other political instruments, we can root out permanently all dependence of our necessary trades upon some product or process of foreign industry is a sheer absurdity. And if we could, we should not really fulfil the requirements of "defence." For the history even of the last few decades shows how easily new enemies may arise, how quickly such "key-industries" change, and how feeble are war alliances as securities for future amity. The new doctrine that we must keep all "key-industries" in our own hands is an impossible doctrine for any thickly peopled and highly developed country. It is only made plausible by

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