The special interests of such a community may become hostile to those of another community, but it will almost certainly not be a “national” one, but one of a like nature, say a shipping ring or groups of international bankers or Stock Exchange speculators.  The frontiers of such communities do not coincide with the areas in which operate the functions of the State.

How could a State, say Britain, act on behalf of an economic entity such as that just indicated?  By pressure against America or Germany?  But the community against which the British manufacturer in this case wants pressure exercised is not “America” or “Germany”—­both Americans and Germans are his partners in the matter.  He wants it exercised against the shipping ring or the speculators or the bankers who are in part British....

This establishes two things, therefore:  The fact that the political and economic units do not coincide, and the fact which follows as a consequence—­that action by political authorities designed to control economic activities which take no account of the limits of political jurisdiction is necessarily irrelevant and ineffective.—­(From “Arms and Industry:  A Study of the Foundations of International Polity.”  Page 28.  Putnams:  New York.)

The fallacy of the idea that the groups we call nations must be in conflict because they struggle together for bread and the means of sustenance is demonstrated immediately when we recall the simple facts of historical development.  When, in the British Islands, the men of Wessex were fighting with the men of Sussex, far more frequently and bitterly than today the men of Germany fight with those of France, or either with those of Russia, the separate States which formed the island were struggling with one another for sustenance, just as the tribes which inhabited the North American Continent at the time of our arrival there were struggling with one another for the game and hunting grounds.  It was in both cases ultimately a “struggle for bread.”

At that time, when Britain was composed of several separate States, that struggled thus with one another for land and food, it supported with great difficulty anything between one and two million inhabitants, just as the vast spaces now occupied by the United States supported about a hundred thousand, often subject to famine, frequently suffering great shortage of food, able to secure just the barest existence of the simplest kind.

Today, although Britain supports anything from twenty to forty times, and North America something like a thousand times, as large a population in much greater comfort, with no period of famine, with the whole population living much more largely and deriving much more from the soil than did the men of the Heptarchy, or the Red Indians, the “struggle for bread” does not now take the form of struggle between groups of the population.  The more they fought, the less efficiently did they support themselves; the less they fought one another, the more efficiently did they all support themselves.