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Certainly the British, led at Geneva by Sir Stafford Cripps, have distinct reservations about freer trade. Once Britain grew one-third of her food, imported the rest. Now, says the Government, Britain must grow two-thirds, because (in the view of the planners Britons elected) the nation must buy less abroad if it is to stabilize its economy. Grain raised at home costs more, but the supply is more "secure."
Or, take cotton. To control imports and foreign exchange—and eliminate old-fashioned risk—the British planners have shut down, presumably forever, the great Liverpool Cotton Exchange, where for decades British buyers and world sellers took the risks and losses and profits of the cotton trade. A British Government commission now does Britain's cotton buying. Britain's spinners now pay more for their cotton than spinners elsewhere with access to free markets, but British planners argue that, if they relax their trade tourniquets too much, the economy may bleed to death.
Global Division. Amidst these grim drifts and doubts, Clayton and the Americans at Geneva hope to slow down the drift toward economic nationalism, and then to let the results demonstrate what they sincerely believe—that capitalism is catching.
But U.S. officials were already noting, in their minds, what might happen if capitalism, in war's aftermath, did not "catch." Said one: "I am convinced there is a most serious question whether we can maintain our private enterprise economy [in the U.S.] if the rest of the world is socialist. . . . We will almost certainly be driven to state trading, at the very least."
Socialism and security are not the only factors working against freer trade. Chemistry ("the science of substitutes") and the export of machinery make it possible for many a once backward nation to dream of self-sufficiency. This technological tendency has been encouraged by the wartime and postwar shortage of transportation. The danger is that in the last two years wartime necessity may have hardened into peacetime policy, and that not even U.S. tariff concessions will be able to unfreeze worldwide restrictions. An expert from one of the "middle powers" at Geneva had this to say, privately, last week:
"I had hope for the success of a world trade conference two years ago, but it has steadily faded. If trade is to be really free, not merely a scaling down of tariffs is needed but a major surgical operation. I see no prospect of that now." To this man, World War III has already begun—not as a shooting war but as a competition between socialism and capitalism. The outcome would depend on how the U.S. harnesses its productivity and distributes its prosperity. If the U.S. succeeded, capitalism would indeed be catching, and the shooting phase need never begin.