ke her a factor
of large importance in the near future. France is too weak economically,
too overloaded with debt and too depleted in population to play a
leading role in world affairs.

The Russian menace is immediate. Bolshevism is not only the antithesis
of Capitalism but its mortal enemy. If Bolshevism persists and spreads
through Central Europe, India and China, capitalism will be wiped from
the earth.

A federation of Russia, the Baltic states, the new border provinces, and
the Central Empires on a socialist basis would give the socialist states
of central and northern Europe most of the European food area, a large
portion of the European raw material area and all of the technical skill
and machinery necessary to make a self-supporting economic unit. The two
hundred and fifty millions of people in Russia and Germany combined in
such a socialist federation would be as irresistible economically as
they would be from a military point of view.

Such a Central European federation, developing as it must along the
logical lines that lead into India and China would be the strongest
single unit in the world, viewed from the standpoint of resources, of
population, of productive power or of military strength. The only
possible rivals to such a combination would be the widely scattered
forces of the British Empire and the United States, separated from it by
the stretches of the Atlantic Ocean. Against such a grouping Japan would
be powerless because it would deprive her of the source of raw materials
upon which she must rely for her economic development. Great Britain
with her relatively small population and her rapidly diminishing
resources could make no head against such a combination even with the
assistance of her colonial empire. Northern India is as logical a home
for Bolshevism as Central China or South-eastern Russia. Connect
European Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Siberia, India and China with
bonds that make effective cooperation possible and these
countries--containing nearly two-thirds of the population of the world,
and possessed of the resources necessary to maintain a modern
civilization--could laugh at outside interference.

Two primary difficulties confront the organizers of the Federated
Socialist Republics of Europe and Asia. One is nationality, language,
custom and tradition, together with the ancient antagonisms which have
been so carefully nurtured through the centuries. The other is the
frightfu