SELF - SUFFICIENCY AND WAR [To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] Sig,—Mr.
Ernst Linder's arguments about the inefficiency of totalitarian dosed economic systems for the purpose of modern war may make comforting reading in democratic countries, but they are really rather difficult to swallow. If I have understood him correctly, his main thesis is, firstly, that in modern conditions a rapid victory is unlikely, so that in the resulting stalemate economic exhaustion through blockade will prove the decisive factor, and, secondly, that a self-sufficient economic system is less blockade-proof than one with freer trading relations with other States.
Let us pursue the second argument a stage further. Suppose totalitarian A at war with free-trading B, and each nation effectively blockading the other—B, let us say, using its superior battle-fleet and A operating with aeroplanes and submarines. A is practically self-sufficient, at a low standard of living-it is true, but one with- which its people have learnt during years of preparation to make shift. B has regulated its economic life according to the printiples of " the market," is dependent on its foreign trade, that is to say on the exchange of manufactured goods against foodstuffs and raw materials, and has a population accustomed to the resulting high standard of living. By hypothesis the blockade, that is to say the cutting-off of the foreign trade of both countries, is to decide the war, and they can only do so as in the last War by their effects on the morale of the civil population. Which popula- tion will suffer the most ?
Mr. Linder may perhaps say that I have over-simplified the issue. But that is better than muddling it. " The greater the volume of any State's production, the more varied its branches and its economic relations with other States, the greater its resistance to a blockade," writes Mr. Linder. But why should self-sufficiency mean less varied production ? It may mean less volume, it is true, but it is certainly the more freely trading countries, concentrating on the more profitable lines and buying the rest elsewhere, which have the less varied production. Why should the fact that the foreign trade of the more self-sufficient countries is " choked by clearing systems and other forms of currency restriction " be a great disadvantage in resisting a blockade which destroys that foreign trade in any event ? Mr. Linder seems actually to imply that a large consumption-goods industry is more valuable for war purposes than a large heavy or armament industry, and it may be that this is what he means with the term " varied production." But why should plant and men organised for the production of all the manifold and certainly varied superfluities of consumption in wealthy countries be so useful when in view of the shortage of labour in war (which he himself stresses) the production of consumers' goods will have to be confined to bare essentials ? How do you " exhaust " an economic system by accumulating raw materials, when th?. only sure symptom of exhaustion—such as that in Central Europe after the War—is a shortage of raw materials and of stocks generally ?
It is of course possible that the nations now striving after self-sufficiency may not be able to achieve it to a sufficient degree to enable them to stand up to a prolonged blockade. It is also possible that the fall in the standard of living due to their efforts in this direction may affect the numbers, health and efficiency of their people, though there is certainly no evidence of this at present. It is conceivable that during a war the greater economic effort needed to support a population on a basis of self-sufficiency may put an extra strain on the man-power as compared with that of nations with extensive foreign trade and able to maintain it.
In fact I think what Mr. Linder really means is that if the more freely trading nations can avoid blockade, and in par- ticular assure their food supplies (which Mr. Linder seems to take for granted), they will'prove to have the greater economic strength and endurance, particularly if they can blockade the so-called self-sufficient States. That is probably true ; certainly it is devoutly to be hoped. But to suggest that nations likely to be effectively blockaded are diminishing their potential war strength by making themselves as inde- pendent of imports as possible and expanding their armament industries is to put rather a strain upon our not inconsiderable powers of wish-thinking.—Yours faithfully,
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