International morality is impaired, however, not only by this feeble sense of mutual obligation, but by the still more injurious assumption of conflicting interests between nations. Nations are represented not merely as self-centered, independent moral systems, but as, in some degree, mutually repellent systems. This notion is partly the product of the false patriotic teaching of our schools and press, which seek to feed our sense of national unity more upon exclusive than inclusive sentiments. Nations are represented as rivals and competitors in some struggle for power, or greatness, or prestige, instead of as cooeperators in the general advance of civilization. This presumption of opposing interests is, of course, more strongly marked in the presentation of commercial relations than in any other. Putting the issue roughly, but with substantial truth, the generally accepted image of international trade is one in which a number of trading communities, as, for instance, the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Japan, etc., are engaged in striving, each to win for itself, and at the expense of the others, the largest possible share of a strictly limited objective--the world market. Now there are three fatal flaws in this image. First comes the false presentation of the United States, Britain, Germany, and other political beings in the capacity of trading firms. So far as world or international trade is rightly presented as a competitive process, that competition takes place, not between America, Britain, Germany, but between a number of separate American, British, German firms. The immediate interests of these firms are not directed along political lines. Generally speaking, the closer rivalry is between firms belonging to the same nation and conducting their business upon closely similar conditions. One Lancashire cotton exporter competes much more closely with other Lancashire exporters than he does with German, American, or Japanese exporters of similar goods. So it is everywhere, save in the exceptional times and circumstances in which governments themselves take over the regulation and conduct of foreign trade. For certain purposes it is, no doubt, convenient to have balances and analyses of foreign trade presented separately, so as to show the volumes and values of different goods which pass from the members of one nation to those of another. But the imputation of political significance to these statistics, taken either in aggregate or in relation to separate countries, as if they were themselves indices of public gain or public loss, has most injurious reactions upon the intelligent understanding of commerce.