a congress of the nations for opening up the trade of colonies (like
our international postal conventions) would be another step. The
internationalisation of Panama, Kiel, Gibraltar, Constantinople, would
immensely enhance security, and advance the progress of
internationalisation. So also an economic convention between France
and Germany, or between Germany and Russia, in which reciprocal
industrial advantages were accorded. Such specific arrangements, which
permit of international interpretation and enforcement, would help to
bring about a larger economic internationalism.

But for the real foundations of peace we must look far below the level
of all these diplomatic and political arrangements, in the world
industry itself. To-day we are still in the full momentum of an
economic development that makes for war, but we are also at the
beginning of an economic trend towards peace. In the present
world-economy the nation is the unit and international friction the
rule, but the movement, at what rate we do not know, tends towards a
world business in which the unit will be international and there will
be peace between partners. We are already in the first beginnings of
the internationalism of capital.

This development is in part the cause of a general {280} phenomenon,
the growth of an internationalism of class. Each social group seeks to
establish relations with similar groups across the border, for the
protection of interests that traverse national boundaries. Thus we
have a certain internationalism of the wage-earning class, of finance,
of various scientific groups. The possibility of this internationalism
grows with the integration of the world through commerce, industry,
communication and the spread of knowledge.

The most obviously international of social groups is the proletariat.
Though sundered on the question of immigration, though (in some
countries) nationalistic and even militaristic in spirit, the
wage-earners on the whole have less to gain from imperialism and
national aggression than have wealthier classes, while they share
disproportionately in the burdens that war entails. On the other hand
workers have less influence in the making of diplomatic decisions than
do their employers. In the end, moreover, their decision, like that of
the capitalist class, is chiefly determined by economic forces largely
beyond their control. It is the nascent internationalism of capital,
not of capitalists or