What lesson? That we have erred in permitting ourselves to grow dependent on the industry, goodwill, and intercourse of other nations, and that we should endeavor to hark back to an earlier economic state of national independence? Well, there are even in Britain rhetorical politicians who speak of the necessity of retaining all "key" or "essential" industries within their national control--who propose to reverse the tide of social evolution by some flimsy apparatus of tariffs and subsidies. This is impossible. The war has left the European peoples, one and all, more than ever dependent for their economic livelihood upon one another, and upon the material resources and labor of other continents. The second lesson is that, other things equal, it is the most highly civilized and highly developed countries that are the most dependent upon others. In a word, there is a presumption that economic internationalism is an essential feature of civilization. You will observe that so far I have made no mention of America. And yet all that I have been saying is, in a sense, introductory to the unique problem presented by this country. America is the only civilized country in the world that is virtually self-sufficing as regards the primary requirements of her economic life. Her soil can and does supply nearly all her essential foods, her natural resources include the materials of her great textile, metal, and other basic industries, the heat, light, electricity, and other forms of natural energy which satisfy her national needs. She has access to skilled and unskilled labor sufficient to develop and utilize all these natural resources. Most of her pre-war imports might be placed under four heads: articles of luxury and taste in dress, jewelry, etc.; certain chemical and other scientific products; supplementary supplies of some foods and materials, from other countries of the American continent, for manufactures and export trade; and a number of tropical products, almost all of subsidiary significance in the production and consumption of the American people. This slight dependence upon foreign countries has been considerably reduced as the result of war exigency. The art products of France and Italy, the fine textile goods from Britain, the dye-stuffs, drugs, and scientific instruments from Germany--in a word, the great bulk of the imports from Europe, have either been cut out of American consumption or have been displaced, temporarily, at any rate, by home products. For several generations the main dependence of America upon Europe and particularly upon Britain was for capital to supplement home savings that she might make use of the stream of immigrant labor in the development of her great continent. This dependence upon European capital, of greatly diminishing importance during the last three decades has, of course, now been reversed, and the principal European countries are heavy debtors to the United States.