That the British Government proposes to follow the German lead and definitely go into business—­thus reversing its tradition of aloofness from financial enterprise—­is shown in the new British and Italian Corporation, formed to establish close economic relations between Britain and Italy.  It starts a whole era in British banking, for it means the subsidising of a private undertaking out of national funds.

It embodies a meaning that goes deeper and travels much farther than this.  Up to the outbreak of the great war Germany was the banker of Italy.  Cities like Milan and Rome were almost completely in the grip of the Teutonic lender, and his country cashed in strong on this surest and hardest of all dominations.  This was the one big reason why the Italian declaration of war against Germany was so long delayed.  With this new banking corporation England not only supplants the German influence but forges the economic irons that will bind Italy to her.

The capital of the British and Italian Corporation is nominally only five million dollars.  The government, however, agrees to contribute during each of the first ten years of its existence the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.  Though imperial stimulation of trade is one of its main objects, this institution is not without its larger political value.  As this and many other similar enterprises show, politics and world trade, so far as Great Britain is concerned, will hereafter be closely interwoven.

Throughout all this British organisation runs the increasing purpose of an Empire Self-Contained.  Whether that phase of the Paris Pact which calls for development and mobilisation of natural resources sees the light of reality or not, Britain is determined to take no chances for her own.  She is scouring and searching the world for new fields and new supplies.  She is planning to increase her tea and coffee growing in Ceylon and make cotton plantations of huge tracts in India and Africa.  The control of the metal fields of Australia has reverted to her hands; she will get tungsten and oil from Burma.  It took the war to make her realise that, with the exception of the United States, Cuba and Hawaii, all the sugar-cane areas of the world are within the imperial confines.  They will now become part of the Empire of Self-Supply.  Even a partial carrying out of this far-flung plan is bound seriously to affect our whole export business.

You have seen how this self-contained idea may work abroad.  Go back to England and you find it forecasting an agricultural revolution that may be one of the after-war miracles.

For many years England has raised about twenty per cent of her wheat supplies.  One reason was her dependence on grass instead of arable land; another was the inherent objection of the British farmer to adopt scientific methods of soil cultivation or engage in co-operative marketing.  The old way was the best way; he wanted to go “on his own.”