.

This end has already been attained for the favored few in most
countries, but famine still stalks periodically among the peoples of
Asia, and even Europe, since the Great War, has felt its grip. Among the
industrial workers of the imperial countries, and among the citizens of
the exploited countries, the wolf is a far more frequent visitor than is
the fatted calf.

Liberation from this widespread physical hardship can be achieved by
producing enough of the necessaries of life to feed, clothe and house
all of the people of the world, and by supplementing an adequate
production by a system of distribution that will eliminate hunger and
cold. Machine industry has made such an achievement possible. It only
remains for a world economic organization to co-ordinate the resources,
the productive machinery and the labor, and to distribute the
commodities produced to those who need them.

The conflict with nature is but one aspect of the primitive struggle in
which men are engaged. In addition, there is the struggle of man against
man; not to aid, to emulate, to excel, but to rob, cripple and destroy.

The existing economic system is built upon the assumed desirability of a
struggle whose outward manifestations are: (1) competition between
economic groups; (2) the class war between owners and workers, and (3)
wars between the nations. Throughout the business world one
establishment seeks to build up its organization by wiping out its
competitors; one class seeks to win supremacy at the expense of a rival
class, and one nation seeks to found its greatness on the prostrate
remains of those opposing nations that it has been able to overthrow.
These three phases of competition are accompanied by three forms of
war--the economic war, the class war and international wars.

All three forms of war have an economic background. The economic war is
the contest for resources, trade, markets, monopolies and investment
opportunities. The class war between the exploiter and the exploited,
grows out of the economic relations existing between the owner and the
worker. International wars are fought for economic advantage--for
resources, trade, markets.

The object of all war is the destruction of a rival by resorting to
those measures calculated to bring the desired result. Since all is fair
in war, the end (destruction) justifies the means, no matter what it may
be.

What need is there to speak to this generation of the devastation cau