GREAT BRITAIN’S TRADE POSITION.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXV, Issue 22, 27 January 1915, Page 4

GREAT BRITAIN’S TRADE POSITION.

The present is the first great war ever fought under modern conditions, a contemporary points out. At the time of the French Napoleonic wars practically all the countries of the world were self-contained. Great Britain had one-third of its present population and raised its own food and its own raw material, with the exception of gold and sub-tropical products, like cotton. But iron ore, timber, copper, tin, and wool were all produced in the country. The total exports and imports of tire country came to about £86,000,000, while last year the total exports and imports amounted to fourteen or fifteen hundred millions. The international trade of the world at the commencement of this war was valued at, about three thousand millions, and tiiw position of Great Britain in this international trade was unique and without a parallel in the history of the commerce of the world. We had not merely our own business to run. We were an essential part of the machine that ran the whole international trade of the world. We provided the capital to raise the products, and we carried half the product of the world. More than that, we provided the capital that moved products from one part of the world to another, not merely for ourselves, but for other countries. These complicated transactions were carried on by means of papers issued in Great Britain, which had become part of the currency of the world’s commerce.