366 Justice and the Expansion of Life 



When a government, in order to impose its will on 

 others, sends forth its citizens to kill them, it is 

 obvious that it is violating justice most flagrantly. 

 Defence obviously presupposes such aggression, 

 and it is absurd to discuss war solely in terms of 

 defence. Aggression is always precedent. 



The reaction of injustice is a universal phe- 

 nomenon. A conquering government may wish 

 to censor all separatist discussion. It cannot tell 

 by their bindings what books contain separatist 

 ideas. It must appoint censors to read all books 

 published, even those by its own citizens. That 

 is, it must limit the rights of its own citizens. The 

 injury cannot be confined to the conquered people. 

 Who knows what the Balkans might have pro- 

 duced but for Turkish misrule? Had Russia 

 allowed Polish education, who knows but a Polish 

 doctor might have discovered a cure for cancer 

 that would have saved millions of Russians? 



The prosperity of our neighbours is essential to 

 our own. The widespread delusion to the con- 

 trary has caused centuries of bloodshed. Only 

 the persistence of the old mercantilist illusion, 

 which ignored the advantages of association and 

 the division of labour, can account for the belief 

 that the prosperity of one country can be promoted 

 by injury to its neighbours. What is true econom- 

 ically is true intellectually. Intellectual develop- 

 ment in Germany never hampered intellectual 

 life in France ; there was rather a reciprocal stimu- 

 lation. The thought and energy given to military 



