The pre-war tariffist argued, when he dealt with the problem, that tariffs would suffice at will to keep out manufactured goods and let in only raw material. To that the answer was simple. An unbroken conversion of the whole yield of exports and freight returns and interest on foreign investments into imported raw material to be wholly converted into new products, mainly for export, was something utterly beyond the possibilities. It would mean a rate of expansion of exports never attained and not only not attainable but not desirable. On such a footing, the producing and exporting country would never concretely taste of its _profit_, which is to be realised, if at all, only in consumption of imported goods and foods. It is no less plainly impossible to discriminate by classes between kinds of manufactured imports on the plea that inequality in the exchanges gives the foreign competitor an advantage in terms of the relatively lower wage-rate paid by him while his currency value is falling. Any such advantage, in the terms of the case, must be held to accrue to all forms of production alike, and cannot possibly be claimed to accrue in the manufacture of one thing as compared with another, as fabric gloves in comparison with gold leaf. In a word, the refusal of protection to gold leaf is an admission that the argument from inequality of currency exchanges counts for nothing in the operation of the Safeguarding of Industries Bill. In the case of any other import, then, the argument falls. MEMBERS ONE OF ANOTHER But that is not all. The case of Russia alone has brought home to all capable of realising an economic truth the fact that the economic collapse of any large mass of population which had in the past entered into the totality of international trade is a condition of proportional impoverishment to all the others concerned. He who sees this as to Russia cannot conceivably miss seeing it as to Germany; even tariffist hallucinations about a "losing trade" under German tariffs cannot shut out the fact that our trade with Russia and the United States was carried on under still higher hostile tariffs. The unalterable fact remains that industrial prosperity rises and falls in the measure of the total mass of goods handled; and men who realise the responsibility of all Governments for the material wellbeing of their populations can come to only one conclusion. Trade must be facilitated all round for our own sake.