ABSTRACT
More than a few similarities exist between then and now. The economic destruction after 1945 was even more severe, and the currency had been even more thoroughly undermined by controls and camouflaged inflation. Since then the priority belonging to politics has become still more obvious. During the growth of our independence since the formation of the Federal Republic, our trade policy has never been more than one facet of a wider tendency, and more particularly of the Western drive towards integration. These points should be steadily kept in mind.
