not merely of recognising a principle but of urging it forward as the absolute key to economic   
recovery and also to political cooperation. In such a scheme a chastened and reduced Germany   
might very well play a useful, and even a prominent, but not an arrogantly dominating part.
 
     
 
 
You will realise that any such scheme for the regeneration and unifying of Europe does cut   
directly across the references in the Atlantic Charter and the Lend Lease agreement to   
nondiscrimination, and to Mr. Cordell Hull's policy of treating the Most Favoured Nation Clause   
as a matter of cardinal importance.   There I confess I must frankly differ.  I believe the Most   
Favoured Nation Cause to be the most serious obstacle to the general liberalising of world trade  
under modern conditions.    I enclose an old paper of mine on the subject which, however, is   
I think still very fairly up to date.  Trade is so essentially interwoven today both with   
defensive and with social policy, that no nation can regard it as merely a matter for its   
individual citizens or treat the trade of different countries equally regardless of its general   
political or economic relations to those countries.  Whether actually conducted by the State or   
by individuals, trade will increasingly be trade between nations as such.  That does not mean   
that it need be restrictive.