Greek sculpture or English poetry or Chinese porcelain; anybody who writes about religion or biology, gardening or chess, has his interest ready-made for him in the minds of his public. The novelist has nothing but what he can himself create.

There, then, is his difficulty and his glory. He has chosen to be a creator and not a compiler. He has chosen to practise an art in which, if he cannot create, he is less interesting and less respectable than a compiler. That is why men of education and intelligence feel the contempt which they certainly do feel for the mass of novelists. "This fellow has not got the knowledge or the mind to tell me anything I want to hear; and he has not got the power which would force me to listen to whatever he wanted to say.' So they feel, consciously or unconsciously, even of the majority of the novelists who circulate in the Libraries. They cannot re

The Times

spect or desire the acquaintance either of the men or of their works. Whether to meet or to read they prefer even the second-rate historian or critic or man of science. But the novelist's revenge, if he can take it, is glorious. If he or she can write Pride and Prejudice, or Victory, we all to-day (though not when Pride and Prejudice was written) bow down and worship at once. The secondrate or even first-rate critics and historians retire into the background; we salute with gratitude, with wonder, the strangely gifted being by whose magic touch the old clay of humanity is quickened to a new birth of life. Life and newness, they are the things. 'If the Lord should make a new thing,' said Moses; but it was a newness of death of which he was speaking. The only man who shares that divine privilege of making new things is the artist: and his creations are, or should be. always of new life.

A FRANK EXPLANATION OF BRITISH COMMERCIAL POLICY

BY SIR ARTHUR STEEL-MAIT

LAND, BT., M.P.

So much misconception appears to prevail in some quarters over the state of British Trade and British Trade policy, that perhaps a few observations on the subject will not be out of place. And to this end it is necessary to grasp the real nature of what has happened in the war as the only means of understanding the present situation.

Industrially, the decrease in productiveness owing to the war, of the industries of the United Kingdom for export, may be measured by the fact that the total estimated weight of our exports in 1917 was only 44,742,000 tons, or 48 per cent of our exports in 1913. Commercially, however, our loss of markets has been very much greater than would be indicated by this figure. Of our total exports by weight in 1917, about one half were to France, and nearly the whole of this consisted of coal and war material. Our exports by weight, of principal articles to Italy, had declined by 53 per cent in comparison with 1913; to Argentine, Brazil, and Chile by 90 per cent, 87 per cent, and 76 per cent, respectively; to China and Japan by 76 per cent and 83 per cent respectively; to British India by 51 per cent; to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada by 73 per cent, 80 per cent, and 49 per cent, respectively. In the South American, Far Eastern, and British Overseas Markets which we have thus lost we have been largely replaced by

other nations and notably by the United States and Japan.

Financially, however, our position appears to be even more serious. Of the total declared value of our exports in 1917 £527,080,000 — considerably more than half- £271,498,000represents exports to our Allies, and the greater part, if not practically the whole of this amount has been financed by the British Government itself through loans, the repayment of which is in many cases problematical, and in some cases, such as Russia, may constitute a total loss. Against a national purchasing power thus reduced have to be set imports during 1917 which, excluding government imports, except food, for the first six months of the year amounted to £1,065,256,407. It is as a result of the situation thus created that we have had in addition to our great funded debts in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere, to raise loans at call or at short periods in other countries amounting to-day to between £300,000,000 and £400,000,000, the repayment of which will be our most pressing obligation at the end of the war. The serious nature of these obligations, which have been largely incurred in the interests of our allies and in furtherance of the blockade, is emphasized by the warning against expenditure in neutral countries issued to the American public by Mr. Warburg on his retirement from the Federal Reserve Board.

As regards shipping, the losses of our merchant marine, on which the whole structure of British commerce has depended, and the withdrawal of, we may justly say, the whole of the ocean shipping on the United Kingdom

register from long distance overseas trade, are now a commonplace in the public press of all countries, and the United States authorities have the fullest information on these points before them from their representatives on the Allied Maritime Transport Council.

Such is the rough outline of the position which faces this country on the eve of peace. Other countries face similar dangers and have made similar sacrifices, but to no other country has foreign trade been so essential an ingredient of national life—and, indeed, so vital a condition of national existence. On it have depended the industries from which our people have gained their livelihood and to which they must turn for employment at the moment of demobilization. It alone has produced the wealth which has made possible the social progress of the country in recent years and on which the aspirations of reformers must make even greater calls in the period immediately succeeding the war. No other nation is in this position. The decrease in value, for example, in spite of increased prices, of our exports to Argentina, Brazil, and Chile in 1917, as compared with 1913-a decrease amounting in the aggregate to 42 per cent represents to us a loss far greater than can be the gain to the United States involved in the corresponding increase of 107 per cent in the value of United States exports to those countries, a rate of increase which appears actually to have been accelerated in 1918, since the National City Bank estimates that United States exports to Latin-America during the fiscal year 1918, were 160 per cent above those during the fiscal year 1914.

Moreover, a consideration of the conditions under which British foreign trade has been built up during the last

century gives a peculiar complexion to the sacrifices and dangers incurred during these four-and-a-half years of war restrictions upon our commerce. Individual initiative has been the mainspring of our activities and the traditional framework of our commercial and industrial prosperity. Government regulation and control has, therefore, in a peculiar degree damaged our commercial machinery and prejudiced the prospects of its speedy

restoration.

It is very far from our wish to boast of these sacrifices or to demand special recognition of them. Still less do we desire to complain of the prosperity of our neighbors; but it is an imperative necessity to provide in advance for the quickest possible recovery of British trade after the war as the most vital condition of national revival and reconstruction. In this lies the only protection of our people against widespread suffering and social disorder. And while this is clearly in our interest, it is probably no less important from the point of view of our European allies and of other countries. It has been said in the United States that the Webb-Pomerene Act is 'likely to prove one of the aptest means that American statesmanship could possibly have devised for promptly rehabilitating devastated Europe, for perpetuating the commercial and financial ties now binding the United States to its allies, and for bringing together that League of Nations by which alone peace can be assured after the war.' Similar remarks have been made by American public men in regard to the new American merchant marine. The same considerations apply with even added force to the reconstruction of British commercial machinery. The world has been in a peculiar degree dependent upon that machinery in the past, and its complete diversion to