its rule would
be founded on the will and on the consent of the governed and not on the
imperial foundation of organized might. The world producers' federation
could therefore look for a support from its constituency that no empire
could hope to demand from its conquered subjects.

The centralization involved in maintaining the authority of an imperial
ruling class in a large and complex state is so great that it invariably
results in friction and disaffection. The self-governing state, less
efficiently co-ordinated and centralized, still has a far better chance
for survival. Its energy-generating centres are so much more numerous
and more localized than those of the class governed empire that they
necessarily reach a larger share of the population. The roots of the
self-governing social group may go no deeper than the roots of the group
under a bureaucratic government, but there are more of them, and they go
to more places. The foundations are sounder because they are broader.

In addition to these functional advantages of self-government, it
possesses an immense asset in the sense of proprietorship that leads the
citizens of a self-governing community to stand by the community
organization because they feel that they have built it and that it is
their own. A self-governing community therefore carries within itself
the means of its own perpetuation in the enthusiasm and devotion of its
population to an institution in which they feel a sense of workmanship
and of the pride of possession.

A world parliament, organized on the basis of self-governing industrial
groups, would be unique in two respects. First, in that it was of world
extent, and second in that it was built upon the industrial affiliations
of its citizenship. If such an organization were handled in a way to
hold the allegiance of its constituent members, its decisions on matters
of world importance would carry an immense authority.

2. _The Field of World Administration_

There, in fact, would be the test of world government efficacy--in its
ability to leave the handling of local problems to local groups, and to
concentrate its energies on the administration of those problems which
have assumed a distinctively world scope. Such capacity to understand
the difference between the business of local groups and the business of
the world organization would be the touchstone of world statesmanship,
the criterion by which the master political minds of the ag