lds of thought and work.

In the meantime we must observe (however briefly and inadequately), how
the dazzling advances of science and industry have affected the
conquest of the world by European civilisation, and why it has come
about that instead of leading to amity and happiness, they have brought
us to the most hideous catastrophe in human history.

Science and industry, in the first place, made the conquest and
organisation of the world easy. In the first stages of the expansion of
Europe the material superiority of the West had unquestionably afforded
the means whereby its political ideas and institutions could be made
operative in new fields. The invention of ocean-going ships, the use of
the mariner's compass, the discovery of the rotundity of the earth, the
development of firearms--these were the things which made possible the
creation of the first European empires; though these purely material
advantages could have led to no stable results unless they had been
wielded by peoples possessing a real political capacity. In the same
way the brilliant triumphs of modern engineering have alone rendered
possible the rapid conquest and organisation of huge undeveloped areas;
the deadly precision of Western weapons has made the Western peoples
irresistible; the wonderful progress of medical science has largely
overcome the barriers of disease which long excluded the white man from
great regions of the earth; and the methods of modern finance,
organising and making available the combined credit of whole
communities, have provided the means for vast enterprises which without
them could never have been undertaken.

Then, in the next place, science has found uses for many commodities
which were previously of little value, and many of which are mainly
produced in the undeveloped regions of the earth. Some of these, like
rubber, or nitrates, or mineral and vegetable oils, have rapidly become
quite indispensable materials, consumed by the industrial countries on
an immense scale. Accordingly, the more highly industrialised a country
is, the more dependent it must be upon supplies drawn from all parts of
the world; not only supplies of food for the maintenance of its teeming
population, but, even more, supplies of material for its industries.
The days when Europe, or even America, was self-sufficient are gone for
ever. And in order that these essential supplies may be available, it
has become necessary that all the regions wh