Read "The Great Illusion" by Norman Angell online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Why trade cannot be destroyed or captured by a military Power -- What the processes of trade really are, and how a navy affects them -- Dreadnoughts and business -- While Dreadnoughts protect British trade from hypothetical German warships, the real German merchant is carrying it off, or the Swiss or the Belgian -- The "commercial aggression" of Switzerland -- What lies at the bottom of the futility of military conquest -- Government brigandage becomes as profitless as private brigandage -- The real basis of commercial honesty on the part of Government.
Just as Mr. Harrison has declared that a "successful invasion would mean to the English the total eclipse of their commerce and trade, and with that trade the means of feeding forty millions in their islands," so I have seen it stated in a leading English paper that "if Germany were extinguished tomorrow, the day after tomorrow there is not an Englishman in the world who would not be the richer. Nations have fought for years over a city or right of succession. Must they not fight for 1250 million dollars of yearly commerce?"