combination in one form
or another are as much a temptation in the relation of firms separated
by a frontier as between those within one customs union. Capital is
fluid. It is quantitative. It is potentially international. A
hundred dollars is indistinguishable from a certain number of pounds,
marks or francs. The machinery for an international combination of
capital is already present, the beginnings of international investment
have already been made. Further progress waits only upon the removal
of barriers, in part traditional. The larger economic interests of the
nations, and of most of the classes within the nations, lead towards
the removal of these barriers and towards the gaining of that security
without which international investment is dangerous and conventions and
agreements almost worthless.

Given such an economic co-operation and such an economic
interpenetration of rival European nations, and the political and
diplomatic conflicts would grow less acrid and dangerous. As the
process continued the interest of each nation in the welfare of its
neighbours would become so great as to make international war as
unthinkable as a war of Pennsylvania against New York. A vital and
powerful international spirit, which already exists but is held in
check by the fear and insecurity of each {284} independent nation,
would be given full sway. There would be a new Europe and a new world,
in which war would be but a vague and hateful memory.

Such developments, however, are slow and generations live their
uncertain lives during a period of transition. While waiting for an
economic internationalism to develop to maturity the nations remain on
guard, armed, threatened and threatening. The change from our present
anarchy to a future concord will not be swift.

For the time even an increase of the economic unit to include several
nations instead of one is not likely to put an end to all international
economic strife. It is not improbable that the proximate economic
development will be not internationalism but _supra-nationalism_. Just
as the customs union grew from a district to a nation, so it may grow
to include a group of nations but not the whole world. The world may
come to be divided into a group of five or six vast economic units,
each of which would be composed of one or several or indeed many
political units. The British Empire, the Russian Empire, the United
States, China and Japan, South America,