Once more we come in sight of the truth that the industrial health of every trading country depends on the industrial health of the rest--a Free Trade truth that is perceptibly of more vital importance now than ever before. It is in the exchange of commodities, and the extension of consumption where that is required on a large scale, that the prosperity of the industrial nations consists. And to say that, is to say that until the trade exchanges of the world in general return to something like the old footing, there cannot be a return of the old degree of industrial wellbeing. Not that industrial wellbeing is to be secured by the sole means of industrial re-expansion: the question of the need of restriction of rate of increase of population is now being more and more widely recognised as vital. But the present argument is limited to the fiscal issue; and it must suffice merely to indicate the other as being of the highest concurrent importance. Adhering, then, to the fiscal issue, we reach the position that, just as foreign trade has been a main source of British wealth in the past, and particularly in the Free Trade era, the wealth consumed in the war is recoverable only on the same lines. It is not merely that British shipping--at present so lamentably paralysed and denuded of earning power--cannot be restored to prosperity without a large resumption of international exchanges: a large proportion of industrial employment unalterably depends upon that resumption. And it is wholly impossible to return to pre-war levels of employment by any plan of penalising imports. THE DYESTUFFS ACT How then does the persistent Free Trader relate to the special case of the "key industry," of which we heard so much during the war, and hear so little to-day? I have said that the question of maintaining any given industry on the score that it is essential for the production of war material is a matter of military administration, and not properly a matter of fiscal policy at all. But the plea, we know, has been made the ground of a fiscal proceeding by the present Government, inasmuch as the special measure known as the Dyestuffs (Import Regulation) Act of 1920 forbids for ten years the importation of dyestuffs into this country except under licence of the Board of Trade. Dyestuffs include, by definition, all the coal-tar dyes, colours, and colouring matter, and all organic intermediate products used in the manufacture of these--the last category including a large number of chemicals such as formaldehyde, formic acid, acetic acid, and methyl alcohol. The argument is, in sum, that all this protective control is necessary to keep on foot, on a large scale, an industry which in time of war has been proved essential for the production of highly important munitions.