So, e.g., the current, nineteenth and twentieth century, economic policy of the Prussian-Imperial statesmen is still drawn on lines within which Frederick II, called the Great, would have felt well at home.
Like other preparation for hostilities this reduction of the country to the status of a self-contained economic organisation is costly, but like other preparation for hostilities it also puts the nation in a position of greater readiness to break off friendly relations with its neighbors.

It is a war measure, commonly spoken for by its advocates as a measure of self-defense; but whatever the merits of the self-defenders' contention, this measure is a war measure.

As such it can reasonably claim no hearing in the counsels of a pacific league of neutrals, whose purpose it is to make war impracticable.

Particularly can there be no reasonable question of admitting a policy of trade discrimination and isolation on the part of a nation which has, for purposes of warlike aggression, pursued such a policy in the past, and which it is the immediate purpose of the league to bind over to keep the peace.
There has been a volume of loose talk spent on the justice and expediency of boycotting the trade of the peoples of the Empire after the return of peace, as a penalty and as a preventive measure designed to retard their recovery of strength with which to enter on a further warlike enterprise.

Such a measure would necessarily be somewhat futile; since "Business is business," after all, and the practical limitations imposed on an unprofitable boycott by the moral necessity to buy cheap and sell dear that rests on all businessmen would surreptitiously mitigate it to the point of negligibility.