ENDS AND MEANS
labour among them. Countries should exchange the
commodities they produce most easily against the com-
modities which they cannot produce or can produce only
with difficulty, but which can be easily produced else-
where/ So runs the Free Trader's argument; and an
eminently sensible argument it is—or, perhaps it would
be truer to say, it was. For those who now make use of
it fail to take account of two things: namely, the recent
exacerbation of nationalistic feeling and the progress of
technology* For the sake, of prestige and out of fear of
what might happen Curing war-time, most governments
now desire, whatever the cost and however great the
natural handicaps, to produce within their own territory
as many as possible of the commodities produced more
easily elsewhere. Nor is this all: the progress of technology
has made it possible for governments to fulfil such wishes,
at any rate to a considerable extent, in practice. To the
orthodox Free Trader the ideal of national self-sufficiency
is absurd. But it can already be realized in part and will
be more completely realizable with every advance in
technology. A single national government may be able
to prevent technological discoveries from being developed
in its territories. But it cannot prevent them from being *
developed elsewhere; and when they have been developed,
such advantage? accrue that even the most conservative
are forced to adopt the new technique. There can thus be
no 'doubt that, sooner or later, the devices which already
make it possible for poorly endowed countries to achieve
a measure of self-sufficiency will come into general use.
This being so, it is as well to make a virtue of necessity
and exploit the discoveries of technology systematically
and, so far as possible, for the benefit of alL At present
these technological discoveries are being used by the
dictators solely for war purposes. But there is no reason
why the idea of national self-sufficiency should be associated
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