world, in exchange for a great variety of useful materials and objects such as 

 it never could produce itself. Portions of the earth which could not otherwise 

 yield its inhabitants a livelihood have thus been made serviceable. A tre- 

 mendous amount of navigation and railroading and trucking has grown up. 

 There has also, however, grown up a very complex scheme of relationships 

 in which every civilized country depends for its continuous well-being upon 

 other parts of the world. Under such conditions, hardly any nation can be 

 self-sufficient. 



The colonial system of modern times has been developing for several centu- 

 ries as a means of assuring certain European countries adequate supplies of raw 

 materials from backward countries. This arrangement led repeatedly to wars 

 for more territory or for territory that could furnish particular kinds of ma- 

 terials, and it produced a system of competing and conflicting empires. People 

 living in those backward countries, and people living in countries that were 

 without colonies, found it hard to understand why the more powerful nations 

 could not mind their own business. But in a country at war today everybody 

 realizes how dependent we are upon other countries for a multitude of supplies 

 that we cannot produce ourselves. 



Between the First World War and the Second World War, statesmen every- 

 where played with the idea of making their own countries self-sufficient — just 

 in case. The British Commonwealth of Nations established trade agreements 

 that would assure the entire group practically all kinds of materials needed for 

 modern Uving, but no single nation in the group could be self-sufficient. The 

 forty-eight states of the continental part of the United States have a great 

 range of mineral, plant and animal resources, but no one state can be self- 

 sufficient, nor can the entire Union. The Russian Union of Soviet Socialist 

 Republics covers an even greater variety of soils and climates and minerals 

 and living forms, and was aiming at self-sufficiency before the Second World 

 War. The Germans had lost their colonial empire and were attempting to 

 develop their chemical industries so as to produce substitutes for the rubber 

 and oil and fats that they were unable to obtain. 



Whatever the benefits of modern civilization, they would almost of neces- 

 sity be lost by any people that persisted in being self-sufficient — in living by 

 itself. On the contrary, it is getting to be impossible to maintain a scientific 

 civilization in any part of the world without extending the benefits to all 

 people everywhere. 



In Brief 



Men use more materials and objects to supply food, clothing and shelter 

 than for all other needs combined. 



The materials used in connection with the care of the body in health as in 

 disease are derived largely from plants and animals. 



654 



