The Daily News. TUESDAY, MAY 21, 1918. THE WAR AFTER THE WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 May 1918, Page 4

The Daily News. TUESDAY, MAY 21, 1918. THE WAR AFTER THE WAR.

That Britain should set lier house in order for what lias ten termed the "war after the war," was impressed upon a representative London andience recently by Dr. \V. S. Holdsworth, of St. John's College, Oxford. Dr. Holdsworth said that before the outbreak of Hie great war he had had jecasion to study the history of English commercial legislation down to the close of the seventeenth century, and he had come to the conclusion that one of the most characteristic features of that legislation was the extent to wiliich it was influenced by considerations connected with national defence. Now that the needs of national defence are more and more apparent, it is exactly the considerations which -were always present to the minds of the Tudor and Stuart statesmen, when they legislated upon commercial topics, that have once more become the pressing problems of the day. Such questions as the maintenance and supply of shipping, of materials for the manufacture of munitions of war, of the food supply, of relations between employer and employed, are again being considered from the point of view of national defence. A war in which a State is obliged to struggle for its existence is the great touchstone of the truth of its political economic ideas. At the outbreak of tlhe war commercial questions had been so long neglected by the Government that they had ceased to play an important part in the shaping of Britain's foreign policy- The result was that the representatives of a predominantly commercial nation, in a predominantly commercial age, were wholly out of touch with tlhe mechanism and ideas of modern commerce. All classes had been so long imlbued with the idea that they must aim exclusively at their own enrichment that the interest of the nation or the Empire as a whole had almost dropped out of sight. During the latter part of the nineteenth century Germany had been pursuing the precisely opposite policy. As in England in the Tudor and Stuart period, considerations of national defence were placed first, and the commercial policy pursued went far beyond these considerations, for its ultimate aim was not merely defence but aggression. From an exhaustive analysis of the reasons which led to German commercial prosperity before the War Dr. Holdsworth reached the following two conclusions: We must make it for ever impossible for Germany and her Ally, Austria, to pursue their old policy of belligerent commercialism, and we must wt our own house in order. He called for a German and Austrian Disabilities Act, for, having regard to the brutality with which this war had been waged by the enemy, we must, in dealing with them after the war, treat them as a semi-civilised nation in whom no trust can be placed. At all costs wo must cut out the cancer of the German banks. No ibranch of these banks should be allowed in the British Empire, and business witih them should: be restricted to the smallest dimensions. Further, branches of British hanks should Ibe set up in all neutral States to counter the activities of the German banks. No British or Allied insurance company should be allowed to insure or reinsure any German risks, and neutral insurance companies should Ibe encouraged to adopt a similar policy by a refusal to do business with those who taike German risks. No German should ibe allowed to have any control over a company incorporated under the Companies Acts of the British Empire, either as ft shareholder or director. We must revive, as against the Germans, the disability to become naturalised. We must aa against them revive, in an altered form, the Navigation Acts. (Dr. Holdsworth said that Britain's new Department of Commercial Intelligence to supervise foreign trade was a move in tlhe right direction, but this by itself would not be sufficient unless this new department was prepared to scrap much of the older economic theory which placed first the increase of the material wealth of the individual trader, and second the defensive strength of the nation. Wihait was wanted -was a Trade Commercial Intelligence DepartBlent of the Admiralty, the. War Office, and the Air Service combined. Suoh a department would look at all commercial and industrial questions from ipoint of view of national defence.