pression, when the
necessary readjustments both of the price-level and of the relative
outputs of different classes of commodities have already been effected,
and when trade remains depressed only because people have not yet
plucked up the necessary confidence to start things going again. But in
the early stages of a depression, an indiscriminating stimulus to
industry in general will serve only to perpetuate the maladjustments
which are the root of the trouble. It will only put off the evil day,
and make it worse when it comes. The problem is not one of getting
everybody back to work on their former jobs. It is one of getting them
set to work on the _right_ jobs; and that is a far more difficult
matter.

On the positive side, what this really comes to is, that if you wish to
prevent depressions occurring you must prevent booms taking the form
they do. You must prevent prices rising so much, and so many
constructional goods being made during the period of active trade; and I
am not going to pretend that that is an easy thing to do. It's all very
well to say that the bankers, through their control of the credit
system, might endeavour to guide industry and keep it from straying out
of the proper channels. But the bankers would have to know much more
than they do about these matters, and, furthermore, the problem is not
merely a national one--it is a world-wide problem. It would be of little
use to prevent an excess of ships being built here, if that only meant
that still more ships were built, say, in the United States.

I do not say that even now the banks might not do something which would
help; still less do I wish to convey the impression that mankind must
always remain passive and submissive, impotent to control these forces
which so vitally affect his welfare. But I say that for any serious
attempt to master this problem, the necessary detailed knowledge has
still to be acquired, and the rudiments of organisation have still to be
built up; and the problem is not one at this stage for policies and
programmes. What you can do by means of policies and programmes lies, at
present, in the sphere of international politics. In that sphere,
though you cannot achieve all, you might achieve much. To reduce the
problem to its pre-war dimensions would be no small result; and that
represents a big enough objective, for the time being, for the
concentration of our hardest thinking and united efforts. But into that
sphere I am