By Patrick J. Buchanan – November 6, 2001

In “The Collapse of British Power,” historian Corelli Barnett savages the men and dogmas that brought his nation down.

In 1914, he writes, Britons believed theirs was the most powerful, productive, self-sufficient nation on earth. But already the rot was deep, as a free-trade cancer had eaten away at its vitals:

British industry had … changed its character from an army of conquest, mobile, flexible and
bold, into a defensive army pegged out in fixed positions, passively trying to defend what it
had won in the past. The fire of creative purpose flickered low in the blackened grate of
the British industrial regions.