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Harald Ludvig Westergaard
Published by Good Press, 2021
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The fact that during the war governments had to take on innumerable functions that were formerly in private hands has lent an impetus to socialism and to the perverted growths that have accompanied it, and it has created a new international system the meaning of which is profoundly significant, though he who runs cannot so easily read it. There are dangerous features in the system which the war evoked and, happily for mankind, there are available safeguards which were evoked with them and need to be retained if human effort can do it.
By a compulsion that there was no resisting, the war forced the nations of the Entente into economic co-operation with each other. Commissions centring finally in the Supreme Economic Council adjusted in a harmonious way questions that would otherwise have led to rivalry and conflicting action in purchasing war materials, securing ships, apportioning food, controlling railroads, financing the war and doing a multitude of other things with the one common purpose of victory. The special compulsion of the struggle is over, but it has left an aftermath of issues grave enough to make peace insecure unless something equivalent to the Supreme Economic Council survives in full efficiency. The agency that did so much to win the war may do as much to prevent another one, but to that end it will have to be guided by economic principles, and it is a saving fact that these still survive. The war has not abolished the law of demand and supply, though governments may forget it. In the coming era they must build better than they now know. Economic knowledge must either go in advance of action and prevent disaster or follow action and be learned from disaster. Beyond computation is the importance of attaining the knowledge and using it when evil impends and prevention is possible.
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