faculties. One geometrical
ratio might cancel another, and the nineteenth century was able to
forget the fertility of the species in a contemplation of the dizzy
virtues of compound interest.

There were two pitfalls in this prospect: lest, population till
outstripping accumulation, our self-denials promote not happiness but
numbers; and lest the cake be after all consumed, prematurely, in war,
the consumer of all such hopes.

But these thoughts lead too far from my present purpose. I seek only to
point out that the principle of accumulation based on inequality was a
vital part of the pre-war order of Society and of progress as we then
understood it, and to emphasize that this principle depended on unstable
psychological conditions, which it may be impossible to recreate. It
was not natural for a population, of whom so few enjoyed the comforts of
life, to accumulate so hugely. The war has disclosed the possibility of
consumption to all and the vanity of abstinence to many. Thus the bluff
is discovered; the laboring classes may be no longer willing to forego
so largely, and the capitalist classes, no longer confident of the
future, may seek to enjoy more fully their liberties of consumption so
long as they last, and thus precipitate the hour of their confiscation.

IV. _The Relation of the Old World to the New_

The accumulative habits of Europe before the war were the necessary
condition of the greatest of the external factors which maintained the
European equipoise.

Of the surplus capital goods accumulated by Europe a substantial part
was exported abroad, where its investment made possible the development
of the new resources of food, materials, and transport, and at the same
time enabled the Old World to stake out a claim in the natural wealth
and virgin potentialities of the New. This last factor came to be of the
vastest importance. The Old World employed with an immense prudence the
annual tribute it was thus entitled to draw. The benefit of cheap and
abundant supplies resulting from the new developments which its surplus
capital had made possible, was, it is true, enjoyed and not postponed.
But the greater part of the money interest accruing on these foreign
investments was reinvested and allowed to accumulate, as a reserve (it
was then hoped) against the less happy day when the industrial labor of
Europe could no longer purchase on such easy terms the produce of other
continents, and when the due balance