centuries to come, can only be radically solved by Socialism, since
Socialism alone can bring the private interests of workers in this
matter into harmony with the interests of their nation and of the world.

The concentration of the world's capital in a few nations, which, by
means of it, are able to drain all other nations of their wealth, is
obviously not a system by which permanent peace can be secured except
through the complete subjection of the poorer nations. In the long run,
China will see no reason to leave the profits of industry in the hands
of foreigners. If, for the present, Russia is successfully starved into
submission to foreign capital, Russia also will, when the time is ripe,
attempt a new rebellion against the world-empire of finance. I cannot
see, therefore, any establishment of a stable world-system as a result
of the syndicate formed at Washington. On the contrary, we may expect
that, when Asia has thoroughly assimilated our economic system, the
Marxian class-war will break out in the form of a war between Asia and
the West, with America as the protagonist of capitalism, and Russia as
the champion of Asia and Socialism. In such a war, Asia would be
fighting for freedom, but probably too late to preserve the distinctive
civilizations which now make Asia valuable to the human family. Indeed,
the war would probably be so devastating that no civilization of any
sort would survive it.

To sum up: the real government of the world is in the hands of the big
financiers, except on questions which rouse passionate public interest.
No doubt the exclusion of Asiatics from America and the Dominions is due
to popular pressure, and is against the interests of big finance. But
not many questions rouse so much popular feeling, and among them only a
few are sufficiently simple to be incapable of misrepresentation in the
interests of the capitalists. Even in such a case as Asiatic
immigration, it is the capitalist system which causes the anti-social
interests of wage-earners and makes them illiberal. The existing system
makes each man's individual interest opposed, in some vital point, to
the interest of the whole. And what applies to individuals applies also
to nations; under the existing economic system, a nation's interest is
seldom the same as that of the world at large, and then only by
accident. International peace might conceivably be secured under the
present system, but only by a combination of the strong