offset its influence. It is for this reason that one is entitled todraw some provisional comfort from the present mood of theAmerican Administration and, as I judge it, of the Americanpeople also, as embodied in the Proposals for Consideration by anInternational Conference on Trade and Employment. We havehere sincere and thoroughgoing proposals, advanced on behalfof the United States , expressly directed towards creating a systemwhich allows the classical medicine to do its work. It shows howmuch modernist stuff, gone wrong and turned sour and silly, iscirculating in our system, also incongruously mixed, it seems,with age-old poisons, that we should have given so doubtful awelcome to this magnificent, objective approach which a fewyears ago we should have regarded as offering incredible promiseof a better scheme of things.
I must not be misunderstood. I do not suppose that theclassical medicine will work by itself or that we can depend onit. We need quicker and less painful aids of which exchangevariation and overall import control are the most important.But in the long run these expedients will work better and weshall need them less, if the classical medicine is also at work.And if we reject the medicine from our systems altogether, we mayjust drift on from expedient to expedient and never get really fitagain. The great virtue of the Bretton Woods and Washingtonproposals, taken in conjunction, is that they marry the use ofthe necessary expedients to the wholesome long-run doctrine.It is for this reason that, speaking in the House of Lords , Iclaimed that " Here is an attempt to use what we have learntfrom modern experience and modern analysis, not to defeat, butto implement the wisdom of Adam Smith ."
No one can be certain of anything in this age of flux andchange. Decaying standards of life at a time when our commandover the production of material satisfactions is the greatest ever,and a diminishing scope for individual decision and choice at atime when more than before we should be able to afford thesesatisfactions, are sufficient to indicate an underlying contradictionin every department of our economy. No plans will work for certainin such an epoch. But if they palpably fail, then, of course, weand everyone else will try something different.
Meanwhile for us the best policy is to act on the optimistichypothesis until it has been proved wrong. We shall do well notto fear the future too much. Preserving all due caution in ourown activities, the job for us is to get through the next five yearsin conditions which are favourable and not unfavourable to the