Between the horns of this dilemma a way lies obviously and invitingly open. The various national governments can take counsel together and co-ordinate their activities, so that one national plan shall not interfere with the workings of another. But, unfortunately, under the present dispensation, this obvious and eminently sensible course cannot be taken. The Fascist states do not pretend to want peace and international co-operation, and even those democratic governments which make the loudest professions of pacifism are at the same time nationalistic, militaristic and imperialistic. Twentieth-century political thinking is incredibly primitive. The nation is personified as a living being with passions, desires, susceptibilities. The National Person is superhuman in size and energy but completely sub-human in morality.
Ordinarily decent behaviour cannot be expected of the National Person, who is thought of as incapable of patience, forbearance, forgiveness and even of common sense and enlightened self-interest. Men, who in private life behave as reasonable and moral beings, become transformed as soon as they are acting as representatives of a National Person into the likeness of their stupid, hysterical and insanely touchy tribal divinity. This being so, there is little to be hoped for at the present time from general international conferences. No scheme of co-ordinated international planning can be carried through, unless all nations are prepared to sacrifice some of their sovereign rights. But it is in the highest degree improbable that all or even a majority of nations will consent to this sacrifice.
In these circumstances the best and most obvious road between the horns of our dilemma must be abandoned in favour of roads more devious and intrinsically less desirable. National planning results, as we have seen, in disorder in the field of international exchanges and political friction. This state of things can be remedied, at least partially, in one or both of two ways. In the first place, schemes of partial international co-ordination can be arranged between such governments as can agree upon them. This has already been done in the case of the Sterling Bloc, which is composed of countries whose rulers have decided that it is worth while to co-ordinate their separate national plans so that they shall not interfere with one another. There is a possibility that, in due course, other governments might find it to their interest to join such a confederation. On this point, however, it is unwise to be too optimistic. Time may demonstrate the advantages of international co-operation; but meanwhile time is also fortifying the vested interests which have been created under the various national plans. To participate in a scheme of international co-operation may be to the general advantage of a nation; but it is certainly not to the advantage of each one of the particular interests within the nation. If those particular interests are politically powerful, the general advantage of the nation as a whole will be sacrificed to their private advantages.
The second way of reducing international economic disorder and political friction is more drastic. It consists in making nations as far as possible economically independent of one another. In this way the number of contacts between nations would be minimized. But since, in the present state of nationalistic sentiment, international contacts result only too frequently in international friction and the risk of war, this reduction in the number of international contacts would probably mean a lessening of the probability of war.
To the orthodox Free Trader such a suggestion must seem grotesque and almost criminal. ‘The facts of geography and geology are unescapable. Nations are differently endowed. Each is naturally fitted to perform a particular task; therefore it is right that there should be division of labour among them. Countries should exchange the commodities they produce most easily against the commodities which they cannot produce or can produce only with difficulty, but which can be easily produced elsewhere.’ So runs the Free Trader’s argument; and an eminently sensible argument it is—or, perhaps it would be truer to say, it was. For those who now make use of it fail to take account of two things: namely, the recent exacerbation of nationalistic feeling and the progress of technology. For the sake of prestige and out of fear of what might happen during war-time, most governments now desire, whatever the cost and however great the natural handicaps, to produce within their own territory as many as possible of the commodities produced more easily elsewhere.
Nor is this all: the progress of technology has made it possible for governments to fulfil such wishes, at any rate to a considerable extent, in practice. To the orthodox Free Trader the ideal of national self-sufficiency is absurd. But it can already be realized in part and will be more completely realizable with every advance in technology. A single national government may be able to prevent technological discoveries from being developed in its territories. But it cannot prevent them from being developed elsewhere; and when they have been developed, such advantages accrue that even the most conservative are forced to adopt the new technique. There can thus be no doubt that, sooner or later, the devices which already make it possible for poorly endowed countries to achieve a measure of self-sufficiency will come into general use.
This being so, it is as well to make a virtue of necessity and exploit the discoveries of technology systematically and, so far as possible, for the benefit of all. At present these technological discoveries are being used by the dictators solely for war purposes. But there is no reason why the idea of national self-sufficiency should be associated with ideas of war. Science makes it inevitable that all countries shall soon attain to a considerable degree of self-sufficiency. This inevitable development should be so directed as to serve the cause of peace. And, in effect, it can easily be made to serve the cause of peace. The influence of nationalistic idolatry is now so strong that every contact between nations threatens to produce discord. Accordingly, the less we have to do with one another, the more likely are we to keep the peace. Thanks to certain technological discoveries, it is unnecessary henceforward that we should have much to do with one another. The more rapidly and the more systematically we make use of these discoveries, the better for all concerned.
Let us consider by way of example the problem of food supply. Many governments, including the English, German, Italian and Japanese, excuse their preparations for war, their possession of colonies or their desire, if they do not possess colonies, for new conquests, on the ground that their territories are insufficient to supply the inhabitants with food. At the present time this ‘natural’ food shortage is intensified by an artificial shortage, due to faulty monetary policies, which prevent certain countries from acquiring food-stuffs from abroad. These faulty monetary policies are the result of militarism. The governments of the countries concerned choose to spend all the available national resources for the purchase of armaments—on guns rather than butter. Food cannot be bought because the country is preparing to go to war; the country must go to war because food cannot be bought. As usual, it is a vicious circle.
Faulty monetary policy may prevent certain nations from buying food from abroad. But even if this policy were altered, it would still remain true that food must be obtained from foreign sources. In relation to existing home supplies, such countries as Great Britain, Germany and Japan are over-populated. Hence, according to the rulers of these countries, the need for new aggression or, where aggression was practised in the past, for the maintenance of long-established empires. To what extent is over-population a valid excuse for militarism and imperialism? According to experts trained in the techniques of modern agro-biology, imperialism has now lost one of its principal justifications. Readers are referred to Dr. Willcox’s book, Nations can live at Home, for a systematic exposition of the agro-biologist’s case.
According to Dr. Willcox, any country which chooses to apply the most advanced methods to the production of food plants, including grasses for live-stock, can support a population far in excess of the densest population existing anywhere on the earth’s surface at the present time. The methods outlined by Dr. Willcox have already been used commercially. The novel system of ‘dirtless farming’ devised by Professor Gericke of California is still in the experimental stage; but if it turns out to be satisfactory, it promises a larger supply of food, produced with less labour and on a smaller area, than any other method can offer. It seems probable, indeed, that ‘dirtless farming’ will produce an agricultural revolution compared to which the industrial revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries will seem the most trifling of social disturbances.[4]
Profitable technological inventions cannot be suppressed. If Professor Gericke’s discovery turns out to be commercially useful, it will certainly be used. Solely in the interests of the farming community, governments will be forced to control the commercial exploitation of this revolutionary discovery. In the process of controlling it for the sake of the farmers, they can also control it in
