Page:Economic Development in Denmark Before and During the World War.djvu/10

vi of the particular resources that make a nation powerful for offence and defence; but there are less conspicuous economic facts which are more fundamental, since they may determine where and when, if at all, wars shall hereafter occur.

Causes of warfare are always partly economic and those which incited the recent one were mainly so. The business plans of a powerful state reached to the ends of the earth and so crossed and interlaced the claims of other states that some writers, then and afterwards, pronounced the war inevitable. If we assume a settled purpose on the part of such a state to encroach on the rights of others, we may say that it doubtless was inevitable. The victory of the defending countries has saved them from an immediate and intolerable domination, but it cannot be taken as an assured fact that similar attempts will never again be made. The economic inducement continues and the means may at some time be forthcoming.

Within the several states war has democratized industry, giving to labour an increase of control a change that, if continued, will entail momentous consequences; but still greater effects have been produced on the relations of states to each other. The world as a whole has changed more than its component parts, and the new relation of the parts to one another is the critical element in the situation. The great increase in the economic functions of governments is one cause of this condition. Within the great international community in which the several states are units extensive economic functions have gravitated into the hands of governments and caused them to face each other as business rivals and to deal with each other in a multitude of ways in which the merely self-seeking policy of private business is intolerable. Power to invoke principles of justice and international law as interpreted by a competent court has become an indispensable means of allaying strife, and this fact exalts to supreme importance the high court of nations which has just been established. It magnifies also the importance of the economic