304	ENGLISH    SAGA
capital invested in foreign countries outside the Empire had
already been lost or was soon to vanish in default and
depreciation.
The uncertainty of an anarchical Europe increased her difficul-
ties. Though her own social fabric remained unbroken, Britain
was dependent on the custom of foreign nations whose ability or
readiness to pay for their purchases was constantly in doubt.
She had to trade to live. Trading with uncertain customers in
uncertain currencies, she could only live uncertainly. Fluctuation
in 'foreign prices and markets meant fluctuation in domestic
employment and social standards. A revolutionary situation
abroad threatened a revolutionary situation at home.
. The City, Englishwise refusing to admit reverse, put a brave
face on things. It still continued to base the economic life of the
country on the time-honoured assumption that every man who
was industrious and prudent could make profits. The absence of
prosperity was explained away by the assurance that a good time
was sure to arrive as soon as the depression was over. The un-
employed man standing in the rain outside the labour exchange,
and the small manufacturer vainly waiting for the return of lost
orders, were told that their sufferings wbuld be compensated for
by the magnitude of the coming recovery.
It never came. True, there were ups and downs, periods of
slump and boom. But the booms were mostly confined to the
fluctuating values of Stock Exchange shares and a few new luxury
trades due to redistribution of national wealth and changes of
social habit. At no time was there any steady expansion of
British exports: throughout the greater part of the period there
was steady decline. In little more than a decade those to foreign
countries fell by nearly a third.
Because of these things unemployment remained a millstone
round the neck of every post-war government. In the twenty
years between the two wars every third working-class family in
the land suffered at some time the despair and indignity of the
dole. Every statesman promised,or tried to find a remedy. Within
six months of taking office Baldwin, himself a manufacturer,
seeing Britain's manufacturers undercut by foreign rivals with
lower social standards and wage costs, sought a mandate for a
modification of her policy of free imports to enable him to
bargain for reciprocal advantages for her tracers abroad. But a
conservative people, brought up to regard free trade and pros-