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view with disfavour trade restrictions, national and international. The finest brains in America and Europe engaged in commerce, the men whose experience is necessarily drawn from contact with every economic method of using capital and labour, recently in a reasoned memorandum voiced their conviction that the impoverishment of the peoples was being artificially caused by international trade restrictions called tariffs.

We desire, as business men, to draw attention to certain grave and disquieting conditions which, in our judgment, are retarding the return to prosperity.

It is difficult to view, without dismay, the extent to which tariff barriers, special licences and prohibitions, since the war have been allowed to interfere with international trade, and to prevent it from flowing in its natural channels. At no period in recent history has freedom from such restrictions been more needed to enable traders to adapt themselves to new and difficult conditions. And at no period have impediments to trading been more perilously multiplied without a true appreciation of the economic consequences involved.

The break-up of great political units in Europe dealt a heavy blow to international trade. Across large areas, in which the inhabitants had been allowed to exchange their products freely, a number of new frontiers were erected and jealously guarded by customs barriers.

To mark and defend these new frontiers in Europe, licences, tariffs and prohibitions were imposed, with results which experience shows to have been unfortunate for all concerned. One State lost its supplies of cheap food, another its supplies of cheap manufactures. Industries suffered from want of coal, factories for want of raw materials. Behind the customs barriers new local industries were started, with no real economic foundation, which could only be kept alive in the face of competition by raising the barriers higher still. Railway rates, dictated by political considerations, have made transit and freights difficult and costly. Prices have risen, artificial dearness has been created. Production, as a whole, has been diminished. .

Restricted imports involve restricted exports, and no nation can afford to lose its export trade. Dependent as we all are upon imports and exports, and upon the processes of international exchange, we cannot view without grave concern a policy which means the impoverishment of Europe.

We wish to place on record our conviction that the establishment of economic freedom is the best hope of restoring the commerce and the credit of the world.*

An important memorandum by Professor Cassel, of Stockholm, prepared for the World Economic Conference held at Geneva in May, 1927, presents the same truth in a powerful

*" A Plea for the Removal of the Restrictions upon European Trade."

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sustained argument which, as the Economist has pointed out, comes to this: that the world is trying by its restrictive measures --whether in the form of trusts, trade unions, tariffs, or other interference to check the free application of Adam Smith's principle of the division of labour, which is the root cause of abundance and prosperity." The World Economic Conference, in its final report, stated: "Europe remains to-day with its tariffs higher and more complicated, less stable and more numerous, than in 1913."

The World Economic Conference of Geneva was initiated by a resolution of the Assembly of the League of Nations, in September, 1925. It was composed of members nominated chiefly by governments, and by the Council of the League, and by Certain international organizations invited by the Council; and also of certain technical experts who accompanied the members or who were invited by the President of the Conference. The whole comprised 194 delegates and 157 experts from 50 Member and Non-Member States, including, besides all the European Powers and Japan, the United States of America. Chosen, with few exceptions, by the governments, the members of the Conference were, as M. Theunis, President of the Conference, said, “responsible, though not official; expert, but not academic." He added (this was in his speech at the closing meeting): "I cannot but believe that resolutions unanimously voted by a membership so widely representative, both in qualifications and in nationality, must profoundly influence the future economic policy of the world." The Conference sat from the 4th to the 23rd of May, 1927.

The kernel of the work accomplished by the Conference and of the conclusions which it reached lies in the following striking

statement :

The eight years of post-war experience have demonstrated the outstanding fact that, except in the actual fields of conflict, the dislocation caused by the war was immensely more serious than the actual destruction. The main trouble now is neither any material shortage in the resources of nature nor any inadequacy in man's power to exploit them. It is all in one form or another a maladjustmentnot an insufficient productive capacity, but a series of impediments to the full utilisation of that capacity. The main obstacles to economic revival have been the hindrances opposed to the free flow of labour, capital and goods.*

*"Final Report of the World Economic Conference."

VOL. 246. NO. 502.

P

The Geneva Conference was followed by the fourth Congress of the International Chamber of Commerce, which was held at Stockholm at the end of June (1927). The Congress had 800 members, drawn from 25 different countries. The delegation from the United States consisted of no less than 200 members, headed by Mr. Owen D. Young. Being purely a gathering of business men, the Congress had no official authority, but its conclusions are of indisputable moral weight. The members came to Stockholm with an enthusiasm for the reduction of trade barriers and customs tariffs, and this problem was placed at the head of the agenda. As a result, the Congress endorsed the resolutions of the Geneva Conference, and the members agreed to use their influence with their governments to induce them to bring these resolutions into effect. It was shortly after this that the German Government, in the " Trendelenburg Memorandum," announced its decision to apply itself to the task of giving effect to the Geneva resolutions. The Trendelenburg Memorandum was adopted by the Economic Committee of the League of Nations, which held an extraordinary session at Geneva from July 11 to 16, 1927.

How serious the situation has become may be inferred from the following facts which were pointed out by Sir Arthur Salter in an address to the Institute of International Relations, Geneva, August, 1927: (1) In the ten years since the war, 7000 miles of new tariff frontiers have come into existence; (2) tariffs are, on the average, 30 per cent. higher than they were before the war ; (3) commercial treaties, which before the war gave stability—if not lowness-to tariffs for ten years at a time, are now drafted so as to have a minimum duration of only one year.

Towards removing these grave economic evils little progress has yet been made. The ministers for foreign affairs understand the solidarity of the interests-political and economicof the States of Europe; it is a truism to them that their own countries can only be peaceful and prosperous if their neighbours are peaceful and prosperous. They meet together at Geneva, these protectors of national well-being; they converse as good Europeans; they construct the lines, so simple, so pleasant, so incontrovertible, along which Europe can revolve in peace and plenty; and then they return to the noisy forums of national animosity, and the lobbies of sinister self-interest, to take up the task of Sisyphus.

R. B. MowAT

I.

2.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CITIZENSHIP

An_Introduction to Social Psychology. By WILLIAM MCDOUGALL.
Enlarged Edition. Methuen. 1926.

The Group Mind. By WILLIAM MCDOUGALL. Second Edition. Cambridge
University Press. 1927.

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5.

The Common Weal. By H. A. L. FISHER. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1924.

WHA

/HAT is the psychological basis of citizenship? What are the psychological characteristics of man as a social animal? How do the fundamental tendencies of human nature adapt themselves to the changing circumstances of the modern industrial order? A study of citizenship which does not take account of social psychology might apply to a native of Cloud-Cuckoo-Town, but would assuredly not be true of the men and women who live in the modern industrial world.

It is in instinctive behaviour that we must look for the psychological basis of citizenship. Long before an individual is capable of forming definite purposes and consciously willing his conduct, he acts instinctively. Human instincts are important, not only because they are there to start with, but also because they are capable of modification and development, and thus continue to form an integral part of conduct, even at its highest levels. Many of man's highest ideals are firmly rooted in primitive instincts, and it is in instinctive behaviour that many of his grandest institutions have their foundation.

The point of view to be adopted in a study of citizenship cannot be static and analytic. It is not enough simply to describe mental states, or even impulses and sentiments, as if they were isolated data which could be examined in abstract isolation as the chemist observes his elements in the test-tube, or the biologist his specimens under the microscope. Citizenship is an activity, and if we are to do justice to its life-content, we must adopt a dynamic view of the mind of man.

(1). THE SOCIAL INSTINCTS.

The study of comparative psychology is not yet sufficiently developed to make it possible to draw up a final list of instincts. If the term " instinct " is interpreted in a narrow sense to include only those modes of behaviour that occur in a fixed and uniform way at or near the beginning of infant life, the list of human instincts will be very short. But if we extend the term to include modes of behaviour in which some element of experience may be included, the list grows very much longer. Some psychologists have enumerated over thirty human instincts. Our attention will be confined to those which are most socially important-those which are of most significance in connection with a study of citizenship.

In the whole range of instincts of social interest, it would be difficult to find one more fundamental than the gregarious instinct. The gregarious or herd instinct has indeed played an essential part in the constitution of all forms of human society. Whatever view be taken of the origin of primitive human communities, almost all anthropologists agree that primitive man was, to some extent, gregarious in his habits. And it is certain that in the modern civilized world the operation of this instinct is responsible in part for the huge agglomerations of human beings in the great centres of population.

Along with this instinct may be considered the instinct of pugnacity. Though pugnacity is not so universal as the gregarious instinct, and is more apt to be weakened in a civilized community by the conditions of the modern world, it is a true instinct with important social implications. It is excited, in its crude form, by opposition to the free exercise of any impulse resulting from the excitement of any other instinct. In a developed form, it becomes a source of increased energy to reinforce action considered to be necessary. A community of men devoid of this instinct would be at the mercy of every other community.

The instinct of curiosity is also almost universal. In some cases the instinct grows weaker with increasing years; in others the passage of time serves merely to strengthen it. In men in whom it is strong, it may become the main source not only of intellectual enquiry, but also of adventurous action.

Closely allied to the instinct of curiosity is the acquisitive instinct. The impulse to collect and hoard objects, even if their

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