aken it from, say, an American
agricultural implement maker. The economic interests involved sort
themselves, irrespective of the national groupings. I have summarized
the whole process as follows, and the need for getting some of these
simple things straight is my excuse for quoting myself:

Co-operation between nations has become essential for the very
life of their peoples. But that co-operation does not take
place as between States at all. A trading corporation,
"Britain" does not buy cotton from another corporation,
"America." A manufacturer in Manchester strikes a bargain with
a merchant in Louisiana in order to keep a bargain with a dyer
in Germany, and three or a much larger number of parties enter
into virtual, or, perhaps, actual, contract, and form a
mutually dependent economic community, (numbering, it may be,
with the work people in the group of industries involved, some
millions of individuals)--an economic entity, so far as one
can exist, which does not include all organized society.

The special interests of such a community may become hostile
to those of another community, but it will almost certainly
not be a "national" one, but one of a like nature, say a
shipping ring or groups of international bankers or Stock
Exchange speculators. The frontiers of such communities do not
coincide with the areas in which operate the functions of the
State.

How could a State, say Britain, act on behalf of an economic
entity such as that just indicated? By pressure against
America or Germany? But the community against which the
British manufacturer in this case wants pressure exercised is
not "America" or "Germany"--both Americans and Germans are his
partners in the matter. He wants it exercised against the
shipping ring or the speculators or the bankers who are in
part British....

This establishes two things, therefore: The fact that the
political and economic units do not coincide, and the fact
which follows as a consequence--that action by political
authorities designed to control economic activities which take
no account of the limits of political jurisdiction is
necessarily irrelevant and ineffective.--(From "Arms and
Industry: A Study of the Foundations of International Polity."
Page 28. Putnams: New York.)

The fallacy of the ide