PRE'^IDENT's address. — SECTION G. 183 



As with individuals so with nations : the advantage lies with a 

 recognition of the fact that it is profitable to live in amity. To 

 do so, however, requires the restriction of the rights of individual 

 nations so that such rights shall be subordinated to the common 

 good, viz., the good of all nations. The Treitschke-Bernhardi 

 doctrine is of course a denial of this. But it has, I venture to 

 say, become evident beyond all doubt, that unrestricted national 

 egoism must of necessity produce appalling conflict, unless some 

 one nation should happen to become so all-powerful as to coerce 

 and exploit all others. A different view to Treitschke'fi is set out 

 in Mr. W. L. Courtney's " Armageddon — and After," where the 

 public weal is esteemed of more importance than coimmercial pros- 

 perity.* And Mr. Holford Knight saysf that — 



" Peoples are eickened with war and angered at its con- 

 tinuance in any field. Unsettled by stringency at home, . . . 

 increased by the exactions of profiteers, they are in no mood 

 to tolerate the expansion abroad of economic aggrandisement 

 under deceptive forms ol foreign policy, secretly pursued in 

 the interests of international capitalists." 



It is with some measure of recognition of this that — if it en- 

 dures — the League of Nations will probably endeavour to build 

 up an international statistic. The " Institut International de 

 Statistique " is obviously anticipating to some extent, though 

 in an unofficial way, international requirements; and the "In- 

 stitut International d' Agriculture " of Rome is also enlarging the 

 domain of the matters to which it gives att-ention. But until 

 definitei principles governing questions of opposing interests are in- 

 ternationally agreed upon, solutions of international difficulties 

 are not^ — in the nature of things — automatically possible. Hence 

 the need for thorough and impartial studies. 



2. Eanf/e of studies of special iirgenci/. — The actual facts which, 

 even at the present moment, are precsine themselves upon politico- 

 economical attention, illustrate the difficulties of the situation. 

 Month by month evidence accumulates that the economic interests 

 of great nations are often in sharp conflict ; and this clashing of 

 interests may be by compulsion ; it certainly dc es not always come 

 by choice. It may depend upon natural factors that lie outside 

 of human control. Thus the varying rates of increase among 

 different peoples, the natural resources of the territories which 

 such peoples occupy, their attitude to the question of admixture 

 of races, their readiness to sacrifice other nations' interests to 

 their own, are inherent difficulties from which, apparently, there 

 is either no escape at all, or at best only a partial one. In the 



* " We have before our eyes a vague but inspiring vision, not of tremendous and rival 

 armaments, but of a United State" of Europe, each component element striving for the public 

 weal, and for furth'T advances in general cultivation and welfare, rather than commercial 

 prosperity." Op. cit. p. 33. 



t The FortiiigMhi Review, September, 1920, pp. 499, 503. 



