he need not have left his shores; or to interfere by confiscation in some form, in which case he dries up the source of the profit which tempted him.
The economist may object that this does not cover the case of such profit as "economic rent," and that dividends or profits being part of exchange, a robber who obtains wealth without exchange can afford to disregard them; or that the increased consumption of the dispossessed English community would be made up by the increased consumption of the "owning" Germans.
If the political control of economic operations were as simple a matter as in our minds we generally make it, these objections would be sound. As it is, none of them would in practice invalidate the general proposition I have laid down. The division of labor in the modern world is so complex—the simplest operation of foreign trade involving not two nations merely, but many—that the mere military control of one party to an operation where many are concerned could ensure neither shifting of the consumption nor the monopolization of the profit within the limits of the conquering group.
Here is a German manufacturer selling cinematograph machines to a Glasgow suburb (which, incidentally, lives by selling tools to Argentine ranchers, who live by selling wheat to Newcastle boiler-makers). Assuming even that Germany could transfer the surplus