COMPETE OR CO-OPERATE ?
SIR,—I was most interested -to read in your issue of November 6th the review by Mr. G. L. Schwartz of the report British Export and Economic Reconstruction issued by the Institute of Export. It is, as your reviewer remarks, fatally easy to postulate as causes what are really effects, and as fatally easy to escape by travesty and ridicule the necessities of reasoned argument.
It is the desire of this committee to focus its goodwill upon the require- ments of peace and the restoration of freedom of trade—the two are inseparable—and in our judgement the Report reflects this desire. How- ever, it is not possible to establish these requirements by turning a blind eye to the defects of the system which has been largely responsible for two major wars in a generation. To suggest that finance has not been implicated in the causes, is, in my submission, to turn away from the truth. Not, however, in the instability of finance is the root cause to be sought, but in its inadequacy. Standards of life can only be improved by fuller exchange, which in itself is determined by the financial mechanism. It would be interesting to know to what underlying causes your reviewer attributes the failure, before this war, to distribute pro- duction, and the failure to increase production, when general needs were only half satisfied, when men were rotting in idleness, when one quarter of our population was undernourished.—Yours faithfully, A. E. UPTON,
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