offer an exhaustive treatment of them. It is
impossible to appreciate the full significance of the immediate social and
economic reactions of the war, whilst an attempt to state the ultimate
effects of the war leads us along the slippery paths of prophecy.
Nevertheless, we are not likely to grasp the importance of the various
phenomena which have followed so closely upon the heels of the declaration
of war, nor to adapt ourselves to the new situation which will arise out
of the war, unless we give our attention to the things which are happening
around us.

Unfortunately we can gain little guidance from the past. The South African
War inevitably disturbed the normal course of our industrial life, but it
involved us in conflict with a nation of relatively little general economic
importance; and so, costly and prolonged though it was, it bears no
comparison in its magnitude and in the character of its main issues to the
present war in Europe. The Crimean War of sixty years ago, though waged
between four European nations--Great Britain, France, Turkey, and
Russia--cost Great Britain much less in money than the Boer War; the issues
so far as this country was concerned were not so momentous; and industry
and commerce, though important, were not then nearly so highly developed
and complicated as they are now. The Napoleonic wars, though comparable to
the present war in fundamental importance, lasted for a generation, which
the war of to-day can hardly do; the effects of the wars with Napoleon were
complicated by the Industrial Revolution; the industrial system and the
commercial fabric erected on it were then only in process of formation and
the power of the people was small.

These differences enable us to see the new factors which have come into
play during the past century. The present war is being fought
under conditions which were non-existent during the struggle with
Napoleon--conditions which on the one hand add to the waste and loss and
misery of war, but on the other give rise to the hope that many of its evil
consequences may be averted. Firstly, industry and commerce are world-wide;
the remotest countries are bound together by economic ties; invisible
cords link the Belgian iron worker with the London docker and the Clyde
shipwright, the Californian fruit grower with the Malay tin miner and the
German dye worker. The economic effects of modern warfare, therefore,
reverberate throughout the whole world, and widespre