90 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



which this fact was recognized. 1 The same driving 

 necessity began thus to operate in the economic 

 world as in the military world under the phase 

 of universal armaments. In such circumstances a 

 large and growing section in most of the leading 

 countries in the West had come to regard the 

 external shock of nations in military war as only 

 the last and external phase of the internal form of 

 the economic and social war. 



In recent times it was even to be observed 

 how the opposition parties in most countries were 

 ready to accept a modified form of this view. The 

 dominant note in the programmes of all the popular 

 and progressive parties in the leading countries of 

 the West had come to consist in the standing accusa- 

 tion that governments were the expression of the 

 war of business interests, that it was the war- 

 ring overlords of business who controlled national 

 resources and international policies, 2 who created 

 public opinion, who made and unmade Governments, 

 who were the real masters of all the resources 

 and affairs of the people. Modern politics, as the 

 New York World put it recently in effect, were 



1 1 was in close consultation with Mr. Joseph Chamberlain 

 at the period when he abandoned the traditional free trade 

 policy of Great Britain and he often discussed this point of view 

 with me. 



Cf. chapters in Mr. J. A. Hobson's Imperialism. 



