intentions in the future for granted. Such an assumption, however, is
unwarranted. To-day the peace-maker is the organiser of the world and
no nation can lead in the peace movement, nor even be assured of its
own peace, unless it has reached a certain stage of economic stability
and is organised on a reasonably satisfactory economic basis. Our
danger of war lies partly within. If we launch out upon an
imperialistic policy, placing our vital national interests within the
area of keen international rivalry, we shall be in peril of a war,
evoked by ourselves.

The time to prevent such a conflict is not immediately {170} before its
threatened outbreak but during the period in which the forces making
for war are slowly maturing. These forces, in our case at least, take
their rise in home conditions. Our chance of peace with England,
Germany, Japan or Russia twenty or thirty years from now depends upon
what we do with our own territory and our own resources to-day.

This may at first glance seem a paradox. Why should we fight Germany
or Japan because our agriculture is inefficient or our fiscal policy
inadequate or because our wealthy are too wealthy and our poor too
poor? Yet the connection is close. Bellicosity is not spontaneous, a
thing evolved out of nothing. Peoples do not fight when they have what
they want, but only when they are frustrated and cramped and need air
and elbow room. War is like emigration. The individual migrant leaves
home for personal reasons, but the great movement of emigration is
nothing but an escape from worse to better economic conditions. If the
natural resources of a nation are too small or are badly utilised the
resulting insecurity and poverty may lead to international conflicts.
Or if the national economy though otherwise efficient and
self-contained is so ordered that huge masses of the population are
impoverished and destitute, there will always be a centrifugal force
inciting to foreign adventures and wars. Where there is no place at
home for "younger sons" they will seek a place outside.

Nowhere can one study this tremendous internal outward-driving pressure
better than in Japan. That nation, though extremely poor, spends huge
sums upon armies, navies and fortifications, and engages in a dangerous
and perhaps eventually fatal conflict with other powers. But it is not
pride of race or dynastic ambition which compels Japan to enter upon
these imperialistic courses, but