The Great Illusion. Norman Angell
does this sort of thing mean? Am I wrong in saying that the whole subject is overlaid and dominated by a jargon which may have had some relation to facts at one time, but from which in our day all meaning has departed?
The English patriot may say that he does not mean permanent destruction, but only temporary "annihilation." (And this, of course, on the other side, would mean not permanent, but only temporary acquisition of that 1250 millions of trade.)
He might, like Mr. Harrison, put the case conversely—that if Germany could get command of the sea she could cut England off from its customers and intercept its trade for her benefit. This notion is as absurd as the other. It has already been shown that the "utter destruction of credit" and "incalculable chaos in the financial world," which Mr. Harrison foresees as the result of Germany's invasion, could not possibly leave German finance unaffected. It is a very open question whether her chaos would not be as great as the English. In any case, it would be so great as thoroughly to disorganize her industry, and in that disorganized condition it would be out of the question for her to secure the markets left unsupplied by England's isolation. Moreover, those markets would also be disorganized, because they depend upon England's ability to buy, which Germany would be doing her best to destroy. From the chaos which she herself had created, Germany could derive no possible benefit, and she could only terminate financial disorder, fatal to her own trade, by bringing to an end the condition which had produced it—that is, by bringing to an end the isolation of Great Britain.
With reference to this section of the subject we can with absolute certainty say two things: (1) That Germany can only destroy British trade by destroying British population; and (2) that if she could destroy that population, which she could not, she would destroy one of her most valuable markets, as at the present time she sells to it more than it sells to her. The whole point of view involves a fundamental misconception of the real nature of commerce and industry.
Commerce is simply and purely the exchange of one product for another. If the British manufacturer can make cloth, or cutlery, or machinery, or pottery, or ships cheaper or better than his rivals, he will obtain the trade; if he cannot, if his goods are inferior or dearer, or appeal less to his customers, his rivals will secure the trade, and the possession of Dreadnoughts will make not a whit of difference. Switzerland, without a single Dreadnought, will drive him out of the market even of his own colonies, as, indeed, she is driving him out.[14] The factors which really constitute prosperity have not the remotest connection with military or naval power, all our political jargon notwithstanding. To destroy the commerce of forty million people Germany would have to destroy Britain's coal and iron mines, to destroy the energy, character, and resourcefulness of its population; to destroy, in short, the determination of forty million people to make their living by the work of their hands. Were we not hypnotized by this extraordinary illusion, we should accept as a matter of course that the prosperity of a people depends upon such facts as the natural wealth of the country in which they live, their social discipline and industrial character, the result of years, of generations, of centuries, it may be, of tradition and slow, elaborate, selective processes; and, in addition to all these deep-seated elementary factors, upon countless commercial and financial ramifications—a special technical capacity for such-and-such a manufacture, a special aptitude for meeting the peculiarities of such and-such a market, the efficient equipment of elaborately constructed workshops, the existence of a population trained to given trades—a training not infrequently involving years, and even generations, of effort. All this, according to Mr. Harrison, is to go for nothing, and Germany is to be able to replace it in the twinkling of an eye, and forty million people are to sit down helplessly because Germany has been victorious at sea. On the morrow of her marvellous victory Germany is by some sort of miracle to find shipyards, foundries, cotton-mills, looms, factories, coal and iron mines, and all their equipment, suddenly created in order to take the trade that the most successful manufacturers and traders in the world have been generations in building up. Germany is to be able suddenly to produce three or four times what her population has hitherto been able to produce; for she must either do that or leave the markets which England has supplied heretofore still available to English effort. What has really fed these forty millions, who are to starve on the morrow of Germany's naval victory, is the fact that the coal and iron exported by them have been sent in one form or another to populations which need those products. Is that need suddenly to cease, or are the forty millions suddenly to be struck with some sort of paralysis, that all this vast industry is coming to an end? What has the defeat of English ships at sea to do with the fact that the Canadian farmer wants to buy English manufactures and pay for them with his wheat? It may be true that Germany could stop the importation of that wheat. But why should she want to do so? How would it benefit her people to do so? By what sort of miracle is she suddenly to be able to supply products which have kept forty million people busy? By what sort of miracle is she suddenly to be able to double her industrial population? And by what sort of miracle is she to be able to consume the wheat, because if she cannot take the wheat the Canadian cannot buy her products? I am aware that all this is elementary, that it is economics in words of one syllable; but what are the economics of Mr. Harrison and those who think like him when he talks in the strain of the passage that I have just quoted?
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