In the conditions of 1914, the small State argument was entirely valid (incidentally the Allied Governments argue that it still holds).[121] It does not hold to-day. In the conditions of 1920 at any rate, the small State is, like Germany, economically at the mercy of British sea power or the favoritism of the French Foreign Office, to a degree that was unknown before the War. How is the situation to develop? Is the Dutch or Swedish or Austrian industrial city permanently to be dependent upon the good graces of some foreign official sitting in Whitehall or the Quai d'Orsay? At present, if an industrialist in such a city wishes to import coal or to ship a cargo to one of the new Baltic States, he may be prevented owing to political arrangements between France and England. If that is to be the permanent situation of the non-Entente world, then peace will become less and less secure, and all our talk of having fought for the rights of the small and weak will be a farce. The friction, the irritation, and sense of grievance will prolong the unrest and uncertainty, and the resultant decline in the productivity of Europe will render our own economic problems the more acute. The power by which we thus arrogate to ourselves the economic dictatorship of Europe will ultimately be challenged. Can we revert to the condition of things which, by virtue of certain economic freedoms that were respected, placed the trader or industrialist of a small State pretty much on an equality, in most things, with the trader of the Great State? Or shall we go forward to a recognised international economic system, in which the small States will have their rights secured by a definite code? Reversion to the old individualist 'trans-nationalism' or an internationalism without considerable administrative machinery--seems now impossible. The old system is destroyed at its sources within each State. The only available course now is, recognising the fact of an immense growth in the governmental control or regulation of foreign trade, to devise definite codes or agreements to meet the case. If the obtaining of necessary raw materials by all the States other than France and England is to be the subject of wrangles between officials, each case to be treated on its merits, we shall have a much worse anarchy than before the War. A condition in which two or three powers can lay down the law for the world will indeed be an anti-climax. We may never learn the lesson; the old futile struggles may go on indefinitely. But if we do put our intelligences to the situation it will call for a method of treatment somewhat different from that which pre-war conditions required.