SOME PROBLEMS OF INTERNATIONAL READ- 

 JUSTMENT OF MINERAL SUPPLIES AS INDI- 

 CATED IN RECENT FOREIGN LITERATURE. 1 



Eleanora F. Bliss, 

 Associate Geologist, T T . »S'. Geological Surrey, Washington, D. C. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



During the four years in "which the greatest nations of the world 

 have been locked in a struggle for military supremacy, there have 

 been many thinking men both behind the fighting lines and within 

 the camps of the belligerents who have realized the role played by 

 economic and commercial activities in the evolution of that inter- 

 national status that was inevitably bound to result in the most ter- 

 rific human explosion that has been witnessed in the history of 

 mankind. 



It is a fact that nations, while in truth forming one great world 

 family, yet are and always will be actuated by the same individual 

 interests and selfish desires that are bound to be an actuating prin- 

 ciple in the lives of those who make up any human family. By 

 realization and appreciation of the fact that as in a family, human 

 equity demands the recognition and development of the rights of 

 the individual, so in the world international justice and polity de- 

 mand the right of individual nations to the means of sustenance 

 and growth, we shall arrive at a conception of the much longed for 

 " world democracy." 



In practice this right can not be actually attained. By virtue 

 of circumstances certain individuals and nations are more highly 

 endowed than others with nature's gifts. While the ideal of democ- 

 racy that all men are and of right should be free and equal, may, 

 and doubtless will, remain to the end of time unattainable, yet the 

 principle of democracy as rightly and faithfully applied demands 

 that those individuals or nations who have attained a certain suprem- 

 acy in the affairs of mankind shall watch over the welfare and 

 safety of those who must struggle under the handicap of a lesser 

 share of nature's endowments. In the life of a democratic state 

 there will always be two factors that will combine to keep the 



1 Reprinted by permission from Economic Geology, Vol. XIV, No. 2, March-April, 1019. 



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