Excerpt from If Britain Is to Live
This little book is an attempt to summarise, as briefly and simply as possible, and to apply to the present circumstances of Britain, an argument that has been more fully and more abstractly developed in the author"s earlier writings.
The attempt is made because, since the Armistice we have seen the issues involved in the argument becoming daily more urgent. It is not a mere question of commercial profit or advantage. If this country is to maintain its existing population (to say nothing of a larger one in the future) without disastrous lowering of standards, certain mistakes of the recent past in our relations with the overseas world must be avoided, and we must take our share of the cost and risk of placing those relations on a new basis.
Whether our policy is henceforth shaped to that end will depend mainly on the feeling of the plain man about it. Will he see the necessity of a new method? That, in turn, will depend upon whether he sees clearly the relation of two or three facts to one another, and realises the conclusion that they impose.
The facts themselves are almost self-evident:
(1) The soil of this country does not of itself provide food and clothing for its population.
(2) These things must be obtained from the surplus of overseas people, by service or products based on our coal.
(3) The international system necessary for the process is disintegrating, or declining in effectiveness.
(4) The decline is not due to natural disasters, floods or earthquakes, but to obstacles created by human wills - political frontiers, customs barriers, competing armaments, and the like.
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