THE FASHION IN FETTERS
IN these days when the conclusion of a trade agreement is hailed with as much enthusiasm, or regarded with as much suspicion, as that of a military alliance, when the freeing of international commerce is regarded at once as an essential step to world peace and as a remote Utopian fantasy, any serious and well-informed study of the fetters binding that commerce is welcome. Mr. Heuser's is emphatically such a study. It is thorough, well-documented, well-balanced and well-written. Owing to the terms of the Acland Travelling Scholarship, which financed the two years of research on which it is based, it covers only the Continent of Europe, and from this Russia is excluded ; but the field is in all conscience wide enough even so, and has been notably well tilled. Mr. Heuser's particular concern is not with tariffs, but with the more up-to-date and deadly quota and exchange restrictions : the rise of tariff barriers is touched upon only incidentally, an exclusion particularly well justified in view of the existence of Dr. Leipmann's majestic Tariff Levels and the Economic Unity of Europe, to which this volume, though of considerably lighter calibre, serves in some sort as a companion piece.
To avoid disappointment on the part of readers, certain points should be made clear. Control of International Trade is not a stop-press topical bulletin ; considered as such it would be hopelessly out of date. Most of its facts relate to the period 1931-5, or at most 1936; since when there have been, as we all know too well, kaleidoscopic changes in the economic as in the political map of Europe. Moreover, it is a severely economic study ; the wholesale transference of tensions from the economic to the political plane, which has been so catastrophic a feature of the last half-dozen years, is outside its scope. The reader will find no reference to the military aspects of German autarky, while the response of Italy to sanctions, which falls within the period of Mr. Heuser's research, is merely referred to as a reason for not seeking in the economic developments of that country any of those clear instances of the sequels to control which can be studied else- - where. Reasons of 'commercial policy figure frequently in Mr. Heuser's pages among the causes of change in quota arrangements ; but the relation of these to wider political aims is left undiscussed. The reader asking for light on these must seek elsewhere. Yet this is not to say that he will not be well advised to study Mr. Heuser's conclusions ; for the economic problem is older than the political, and an understanding of the normal working of the quota and exchange restriction system (if one can use the word " normal " of so decidedly pathological a distortion of economic activities) is at least a useful preliminary to any study of its use as a political and strategic weapon.
Its limitations once accepted, Control of International Trade stands out as an admirable example of a practical economic study. General principles are kept clearly in mind throughout, but constantly checked by experience ; deduction is supported by, and in turn gives a lead to, inductive reasoning ; the inter- action of administrative and economic factors is dearly dis- played, the balance of national loss and gain is judiciously assessed. Particularly noteworthy is the way in which a highly abstract and formal geometrical presentation of the alternative conditions obtaining between trading countries is related to historical developments and actual instances, the freaks and rarities among the assumed alternatives sorted out and due relative weight assigned to the various considerations involved. Merely from the methodological point of view, indeed, Mr. Heuser's book deserves study by that chorus of sceptics who deny that strictly economic analysis can ever bear useful fruit or be profitably related to reality. It is of equal intetest to students of economic theory, of recent economic history, and of public administration, the first by reason of its exploration of fascinating theoretical possibilities and their application, to the second because of its clear and methodical exposition of those economic developments which have so largely helped to make Europe what it is today, and to the third because of the shrewd and well-documented record which it provides of the shaping in the hands of authority, under the stress of half- understood economic forces, practical administrative necessi- ties, and the pressure of powerful interests, of a potent if
pernicious tool of economic control. HONOR CROOME.
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