supplies which every country needs, or are they going to let the rest of the world have fair access to them? I think this to be upon the whole the most important of the many urgent issues that confront us. For, if close nationalism or imperialism should prevail, the weaker placed nations could not acquiesce. Close economic nationalism is not for them a possibility. They must win access to the world's supplies, peacefully if possible, or else by force.

The fatality of the great choice is thus evident. Nations must and will fight for the means of life. Close economic nationalism or imperialism on the part of the great empires must, therefore, compel the restricted countries to organize force for their economic liberation. This in turn will compel the great empires to maintain strong military and naval defences. It is impossible for the other nations of the earth to leave the essential supplies of metals, foods, and oils, and the control of transport in the exclusive possession of one or a few close national corporations or a permanent "Big Four." Under such conditions the sacrifices of the great war would have been made in vain. Nothing would have been done to end war, or to rescue the world from the burden of militarism. The pre-war policy of contending alliances and of competing armaments, draining more deeply than ever the surplus incomes of each people, would be resumed. And it would bring no sense of security, but only the postponement of further inevitable conflicts in which the very roots of western civilization might perish.

The renewed and intolerable burdens of such a militarism, with its accompaniments of autocracy, must let loose class war in every nation which has gone through the agony of the European struggle and has seen the great hope of a peaceful internationalism blighted.

It is predominantly upon America and Britain that this great moral economic choice rests, the choice on which the safety and the progress of humanity depend. A refusal by either of these great powers can make any league of nations and any economic internationalism impossible. The confident consent of both can furnish the material and moral support for the new order. If these countries in close concerted action were prepared to place at the service of the new world order their exclusive or superior resources of foods, materials, transport and finance—the economic pillars of civilization—the stronger pooling their resources with the weaker for the rescue work in this dire emergency, this political coöperation would supply that mutual confidence and goodwill without which no governmental machinery of a League of Nations, however skilfully contrived, can begin to work.

I have spoken of Britain and America as the two countries upon whose choice this supreme issue hangs. But the act of choice is not the same for the two. The British imperial policy (apart from that of the self-governing dominions) has been conducted on a basis of free trade or economic internationalism. A reversion to close imperialism would be for her a retrogression. The United States, on the other hand, has practised a distinctively national economy, and the adoption of a free internationalism would be a great act of faith, or—as some would put it—a leap in the dark.

I prefer the former term as indicative of the new truth which is dawning on the world, the conviction that just as an individual can only fully realize his personality in a society of other individuals, that is, a nation, so nations cannot rise to the full stature of nationalism save in a society of nations. For only thus can nationality, either in its economic or its spiritual side, make full use of its special opportunities for the development of a distinctive national character. The supreme challenge is, therefore, not to the continental European nations, not even to Britain, but to America. For her alone the choice has the full quality of moral freedom. For she alone is able to refuse. Other great western nations might seek to stand alone for economic life and for defence. They could not long succeed; they are too deeply implicated in one another's destinies. Even Britain with her vast extra-European territories could not hope to disentangle herself from the affairs of her near neighbors. America could do this, at any rate for some considerable time to come. True she has economic committals in Europe. She has loaned European governments and peoples some ten milliards of money. She is still lending her credit to support the large surplus supplies of foods and other goods she is selling Europe. If this business is to continue, it will implicate her even closer in European affairs. Europe in its present case can hardly be presented as a safe business proposition. If America proceeds along this path, it will be because she looks beyond the immediate risks to the wider future of a safer and more prosperous world. She could now draw out; she could cut the present economic losses of her European loans; she could divert her attention from the European markets to the development of the American continent as the principal area for the disposal of her surplus goods and energies.

It is open to her to take this course. Prudence may seem to dictate it. The reckless mismanagement of European governments, the wild unsettlement of peoples, the badness of the peace, are, indeed, strong arguments for America cleaving to her old ways.

Europe has no rightful claim upon America, either for the urgent work of economic rescue, or for participation in the permanent project of a society of nations. America not only has the right to refuse; it is probably to her immediate interest to refuse. But, at the risk of misinterpretation, as an officious outsider, I will venture to present an appeal to the wider and deeper interests of Americans. The refusal of America not only shuts the gate of hope for millions of war-broken, famine-ridden people in Central and Eastern Europe, it removes the keystone for the edifice of a society of nations. For effective international coöperation in economic resources and opportunities is the indispensable condition of such a society. No League of Nations can survive its infancy without this economic nourishment. The world's wealth for the world's wants: unless this maxim can in some effective way be realized, no such escape has been made from the pre-war policy of greed and grab as will furnish a reasonable hope for a world redeemed from war—a world clothed and in its right mind.

Is it not the larger and the longer hope and interest of America to live as a great partner in such a society of nations, rather than to live a life of isolated prosperity, perhaps the sole survivor in the collapse of western civilized states? I make this appeal in the language of Edmund Burke, in his great plea for conciliation with America, when he reminded his hearers that "Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom." This, I venture to say, is the true appeal of Europe to America today. Burke's words, I feel, must kindle conviction in every generous heart, for in the last resort it is the desire of the heart and not the calculation of the intellect that governs and should govern human conduct. For morality among nations, as among individuals, implies faith and risk-taking, not recklessness, indeed, but dangerous living, a willingness and a desire to take a hand in the largest game of life and continually to "pluck out of the nettle, danger, safety"; but this safety itself only as a momentary resting-place in the unceasing urge of nations to use their nationality, not for the achievement of some selfish separate perfection, but for the ever advancing realization of national ends within the wider circle of humanity.

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