ded to push men into war, is the conclusion forced
upon us that we shall have war so long as we have economic desires, and
that in the future mankind will continue to drag itself along a
blood-stained path? Can we change in human nature that desire for
material things, which has always been the great survival virtue of the
race?

To many men the answer points to perpetual war. They believe that
nations will fight so long as they are hungry, and they will always be
hungry. War and birth are the twin immortals; there will always be
more babies than can be fed and there will always be war. As well
preach against death as against war, since the peaceful, abstaining
nations are doomed to extinction and the war-like nations survive and
determine the character of humanity. The meek nations do not inherit
the earth. They go down in the ceaseless struggle between the living
and the dying peoples.

During the last one hundred and fifty years, however, a more optimistic
conviction has struggled for expression. The Industrial Revolution has
enormously increased the wealth of the world, and has enabled
over-populated industrial countries to secure their food from
agricultural {29} lands thousands of miles away. There has grown up a
vast complementary trade between old and new countries, and even
competing manufacturing nations find it profitable to trade with one
other. The hope has therefore arisen that perhaps this war-breeding,
economic motive may hereafter lead to peace and away from war.
Admitted that peoples once had to fight, may it not in this New World
of industry be "good business" to live and let live, to agree with your
competitor, to trade amicably? May not the industrial transformations,
undreamed of in past centuries, permit a world-population to live off
its labour, immune from the necessity of killing? Have we not here an
alternative to war?

The doctrine is that of _laissez-faire_, untrammelled competition, free
trade. From Adam Smith down to the present day, it has been preached
to us that each man's enlightened selfishness, unguided and unimpeded,
will work out to the welfare of each society and to peace between all
societies. The interests of nations in trade is held to be reciprocal.
Buyer and seller both gain, so that England cannot prosper unless
Germany prospers, and England cannot suffer without Germany suffering.
You need not fight for commerce. Trade does not follow the flag but
the line