VI
But if disarmament is likely to compel a new type of international dealing, it is plain that there must be some kind of international clearing house. We have gone past the stage at which one nation can transact a bargain with another which will not affect the interests of a third party. The shrinkage of the world has thrown the nations too closely together for any of them to suppose that they can determine their policies in isolation and carry them through piece-meal with this one and that, without reference to the rest. Preferential trade agreements, for instance, are not merely an affair of the contrasting parties; they affect all the nations. And it is impossible any longer—in the absence of force majeure—to establish relations of that kind without the consent of the rest of the world. The case for an international clearing house is indeed at this time of day irresistible.
Moreover, the immediate stress of the food-situation throughout the world is certain to require some such organ for the co-ordination and the distribution of the available food-supply. It seems likely that the supply of food for the world will be for some years inadequate to the need without careful distribution; and it will require the most careful organisation and rationing of what food there is if the people of some parts of the world are to escape very great and protracted hardship. For this, a clearing house is necessary. Fortunately we have the foundations of this organisation already laid—on the one hand in the machinery of international distribution created by Mr. Hoover, and on the other in Mr. David Lubin’s far-seeing institution of an international bureau for the survey of the world’s grain resources. From a central organisation of this kind the world will need to receive its food for some time to come.
Nor is the problem of food the only urgent matter of this kind. There will be presently a very great demand for the raw material of industrial production. In the past, raw material has been provided by means of private ventures of all kinds on a competitive basis. Any reversion to such a chaotic and uncoordinated method of providing raw material would be attended by consequences of a most disastrous kind. There would be no guarantee of equitable distribution among the nations; with the result that those unfavourably placed in the matter of capital or credit, would be put in a position of permanent and increasing economic dependence and disability. If the nations now released from ancient tyrannies are to be set upon their feet, it is plain that they must receive supplies of raw material as nearly adequate for their need as possible. Otherwise we may create a number of pauper nations. In addition to this fact, there is also the danger that the private exploitation of the sources of raw material would tend to the subjugation of backward peoples whose lands chanced to be rich in such material. It is an old and a shameful story how the need of civilisation for raw material has led to the laceration and impoverishment of the native population of (say) Africa; and it is necessary that the conscience of the world should refuse to tolerate the system of concessions and the like which made this criminality possible. On both grounds—the need of industrial production among the civilised people, and the rights of the undeveloped peoples—a system of the joint international quest and distribution of raw material is requisite.
This international rationing of raw material may seem a drastic and impracticable proposal; but any consideration of its alternatives must drive us to the conclusion that we cannot escape some experiment however inadequate in this direction. In the present state of the world, the balance is so overwhelmingly in favour of the strong nations that any perpetuation of the private and competitive quest of raw materials will simply lead to a struggle of great commercial imperialisms in which the victims will be the weak nations. Just as the unprivileged classes within the nation have been the victims of the great industrial powers, the weaker nations which start with a handicap in the struggle will be disabled in perpetuity and will be squeezed between their stronger neighbours. It is difficult to see that the economic dependence and subjection of one nation to another differs appreciably in its consequences to the people at large from that political dependence and subjection to destroy which the European war was undertaken and fought at so terrific a cost.