s of the earth to leave
the essential supplies of metals, foods, and oils, and the control of
transport in the exclusive possession of one or a few close national
corporations or a permanent "Big Four." Under such conditions the
sacrifices of the great war would have been made in vain. Nothing would
have been done to end war, or to rescue the world from the burden of
militarism. The pre-war policy of contending alliances and of competing
armaments, draining more deeply than ever the surplus incomes of each
people, would be resumed. And it would bring no sense of security, but
only the postponement of further inevitable conflicts in which the very
roots of western civilization might perish.

The renewed and intolerable burdens of such a militarism, with its
accompaniments of autocracy, must let loose class war in every nation
which has gone through the agony of the European struggle and has seen
the great hope of a peaceful internationalism blighted.

It is predominantly upon America and Britain that this great moral
economic choice rests, the choice on which the safety and the progress
of humanity depend. A refusal by either of these great powers can make
any league of nations and any economic internationalism impossible. The
confident consent of both can furnish the material and moral support
for the new order. If these countries in close concerted action were
prepared to place at the service of the new world order their exclusive
or superior resources of foods, materials, transport and finance--the
economic pillars of civilization--the stronger pooling their resources
with the weaker for the rescue work in this dire emergency, this
political cooeperation would supply that mutual confidence and goodwill
without which no governmental machinery of a League of Nations, however
skilfully contrived, can begin to work.

I have spoken of Britain and America as the two countries upon whose
choice this supreme issue hangs. But the act of choice is not the same
for the two. The British imperial policy (apart from that of the
self-governing dominions) has been conducted on a basis of free trade
or economic internationalism. A reversion to close imperialism would be
for her a retrogression. The United States, on the other hand, has
practised a distinctively national economy, and the adoption of a free
internationalism would be a great act of faith, or--as some would put
it--a leap in the dark.

I prefer the former term as indi