been with their husbands at home. How had they got into this position? Simply by the original sin of allowing their countries to be moved and governed and fed and clothed by the pursuit of profit for capitalists instead of by the pursuit of righteous prosperity for “all people that on earth do dwell”. The first ship that went to Africa to sell things to the natives at more than cost price because there was no sale for them at home began not only this war, but the other and worse wars that will follow it if we persist in depending on Capitalism for our livelihood and our morals. All these monstrous evils begin in a small and apparently harmless way. It is not too much to say that when a nation, having five shillings to divide-up, gives four to Fanny and one to Sarah instead of giving half a crown to each and seeing that she earns it, it sows the seed of all the evils that now make thoughtful and farseeing men speak of our capitalistic civilization as a disease instead of a blessing. 41 THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE Do not, however, disparage foreign trade. There is nothing wrong with foreign trade as such. We could have no gold without foreign trade; and gold has all sorts of uses and all sorts of beauties. I will not add that we could have no tea, because I happen to think that we should be better without this insidious Chinese stimulant. It is safer and probably healthier for a nation to live on the food and drink it can itself produce, as the Esquimaux manage to do under much harder conditions. But there are many necessaries of a high civilization that nations cannot find within their own boundaries, and must buy from oneanother. We must trade and travel and come to know oneanother all over the habitable globe. We have to make international institutions as well as national ones, beginning with Trading Treaties and Postal Conventions and Copyright Conventions, and going on to the Leagues of Nations. The necessities of travelling and trade, and the common interest of all nations in the works and discoveries of art, literature, and science, have forced them to make international agreements and treaties with oneanother which are making an end of “keeping ourselves to ourselves”, and throwing half bricks at foreigners and strangers. Honest foreign trade would never have got us into trouble.