II. The Nation and the Community of Nations
MACHIAVELLISM AND REALISM
In actual fact what can all the international treaties and all the appeals to the nations to restrict their sovereignties in the higher interests of an international order avail if the conviction prevails that treaties need only be adhered to as long as appears profitable? That states can live according to their own code of laws, which is beyond good and evil? That politics turn only on the conception of friend and foe and are subject to a different set of morals than obtain between individuals?
Part Two – The Economic Elements of International Order
‘Telle est la condition humaine que souhaiter la grandeur de son pays, c’est souhaiter mal à ses voisins. . . Il est clair qu’un pays ne peut gagner sans qu’un autre perde.’
Voltaire, Dictionnaire phil., art. Patrie.
I. The Economic System and International Order
After giving a general description of the problems of international order in the introduction, in the course of which actual political questions were discussed as far as seems suitable for the purposes of this book, we shall now pursue those questions which seem to us to be most important.
II. Caesaro-Economy
The mistake of those among the contemporary socialists, who have made Capitalism responsible for war and imperialism, is however much greater and more fateful than we have up to now imagined. Not only is the accused, that is to say capitalism, wrongly blamed for such a serious crime, rather is it the accuser, i.e. socialism, which seems to be more and more heavily indicted in the course of the criminal trial instigated by itself. This conclusion was already glimmering through the statements of the preceding chapter and must now be substantiated in detail.
III. The International Problem of Raw Materials and Colonies
INTERNATIONAL ‘SOCIAL JUSTICE’
It was once said, somewhat unpleasantly, of the English imperialism of the 19th century that it said ‘Christ’ and meant ‘cotton’. That is one of those unjust generalizations, which have so much contributed to the poisoning of the relationships between peoples and is especially ill-suited, when it is expressed with pharisaical self-righteousness.
IV. The International Population Problem
THE DEVELOPMENT
The entire problem of raw materials and colonies cannot be fully understood, if it is not set in relation to the population problem. In this way however there arises for us in a quite general sense the question of the relationships between the population problem and the peace problem.
Part Three – The Fear of World Economy
I. The Decay of the World Economy
The remarks of the preceding chapter have proved how much the peace, order, security, justice and welfare of all countries depend on the creation of a common will of the nations to overcome the present decay of the world-economy and to find new bases for free and universal international economic transactions.
II. The Fear of Competition
THE GENERAL FEAR OF COMPETITION
In the last chapter we found the basic cause of today’s fear of a world economy to be that the days of a genuine world economy are long past, and that its chaotic condition has become a matter of habit. Fewer and fewer people can still conceive that something like a real world economy was once possible, and even fewer that anything like it could become possible once more.
III. The Fear of an Adverse Balance of Payments
THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM
There is hardly another conception which has accompanied the economists of my own generation throughout their professional lives in so persistent and tormenting a manner as the conception of an ‘adverse balance of payments’1).
