Nutrition and Trade Some of the points in Mr. Bruce's
notable speech at the League Assembly may be found more fully developed in a memorandum placed before the Economic Committee of the League by Mr. F. L. MacDougall, Economic Adviser to the Australian Government in London; and just published at Geneva. Mr. MacDougall lays valuable emphasis on the connexion between a nutrition policy and a policy for assuring an expanding market for trade. He suggests a three-fold approach—(i) by using the International Labour Office method to increase the remuneration of labour, especially at the bottom ; (2) by increased social services, which in effect widen the distribution of spending-power ; (3) by cheapening the retail price of food and other requirements. The memo- randum calls attention to the masses of agricultural producers who—not only in China or India, but also in South-eastern Europe—are miserably poor, because they cultivate by backward methods. Improved methods would increase their productivity ; a better nutrition policy in the industrial countries would increase their sales ; and the two together would make them far better customers for the manufactures which the industrial countries produce. In developing natural reciprocities of this sort the best hope for stabilising prosperity lies. But of course nationalist ideals of " self-sufficiency " cut right across it.
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