5. The League of Nations Failure
The principal scheme recently advanced as a means of co-ordinating the life of the world—the League of Nations Covenant—violates all three of these essential principles. In the first place, the League Covenant, with certain minor exceptions, is a political and not an economic document, devoting its attention to territorial integrity and the preservation of sovereignty, and passing over such economic problems as resource control, and the competition for raw materials, markets and investment opportunities as though they were non-existent. In the second place instead of concerning itself with all of the integral parts of the world, it treats nations other than the "big five" (Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the United States) as though they were of second or of third rate importance. China, India, Germany, Russia and Latin America, with considerably more than half of the world's population, and with at least half of the world's essential resources, were slighted or ignored. In the third place, the League Covenant is not based on world thinking. On the contrary, it was designed to set up one part of the world, the victorious Allies, against four other parts of the world: the enemy countries, Soviet Russia, the undeveloped (unexploited) countries, and the small and powerless countries. Political, sectional and provincial in its point of view, the League, as a means of world organization, was destined, from its inception, to pathetic failure. World economic life is an established fact of such moment that it must be reckoned with in any scheme for social rebuilding.
A capacity for organization and for conscious improvement distinguishes man from most of the animals. In the past, men have organized the army, the church, the city, the nation, the school. The events surrounding the industrial revolution have placed a new task on their shoulders—the task of organizing world economic life.
Without doubt this is the largest and the most intricate problem in organization that the human race has ever faced. On the other hand, the interdependence of economic life invites co-ordination, while the advances in organization methods, particularly among the masses of the people, render the transition from local to world organization quite logical and relatively easy—far easier, certainly, than the first hesitating steps that the race took in the direction of co-operative activities. Even though the task were far more difficult than it is, the race must perform it or pay an immense price in hardship, suffering and decimation.
The work is already begun. Private capitalists have built world systems of trade, transport and banking. Soviet Russia has made an heroic attempt to organize one portion of the earth's surface along economic lines. For the most part, however, the task of co-ordinating the world's economic life awaits the courage and the genius of a generation that shall add this triumph to the achievements of the race.
6. Axioms of Economic Reorganization
Certain well-defined and widely understood principles, that might almost be called axioms of social procedure, are to be reckoned with in any effort at world economic reorganization. For convenience of discussion, they may be summarized thus:
1. The wheels of industry must be kept turning smoothly, regularly and efficiently.
A country like Russia, consisting, for the most part of agricultural villages, can survive, even though machine industries practically cease to function, while such countries as Germany and Britain, built of Bremens, Hamburgs, Essens, Glasgows and Manchesters are dependent for their food supply as well as for their supply of raw materials upon the continued production and transport of commodities. The State of Rhode Island, with its 97.5 per cent of city and town dwellers, typifies this dependence. Given such concentrated populations engaged in specialized industries, and the cessation of production means speedy starvation for those that cannot migrate.
2. Provision must be made for improvements and betterments.