It cannot be supposed that nations will ever deliberately substitute a principle of mutualism for the principle of gain in trade. They could not if they would. Those that have the advantage must fight for it to the end. Commerce itself, if you look to it, is a complex structure of growth for which there is nowhere any original accountability. It cannot change its philosophy, any more than a tree, for it has none. It has instead a vital instinct for opportunity and a flexible way with necessity and circumstance. There is no hope of its being reformed ideally by mass intelligence. The conglomerate mind is irresponsibly, impersonally selfish; it cannot act without experience. There is no experience of peoples sustaining one another on a sympathetic plan, each willing to give as much as it takes, with no balance favourable or unfavourable to be settled in gold or debt. This has never happened. It is an idea only. But if now we move our point of view from the centre to the circumference, we shall see already taking place, with the force of natural events, momentous alterations in the scheme of economic life—one of decay and one of revaluation. We witness almost unawares the ruin of that classic enterprise of empire which is founded upon the theory of a balance of trade and a division of labour whereby the colonies, the dominions, the subject and mandated peoples are hewers, drawers, and food-bringers, serving those who live in cities, practise machine-craft, and think themselves wholly benevolent. The machine has betrayed it. Nothing more unexpected has occurred since the discovery of a simple chemical reaction that was to destroy the privileged warrior-caste among mankind. When a splendid knight in armour was powerless against the peasant with a musket and a knight with a musket no better than a peasant, the romantic profession of arms was doomed. Gunpowder ended the age of chivalry. Ultimate military power passed to the people. And now for hundreds of millions of people hitherto inferior in status the machine is a symbol of liberation, freedom, independence, recognition, racial power. Japan is the thrilling example in Asia. Did it not deliver her from a thraldom imposed by the Western Powers in the interest of their own trade? Did it not make her in one generation their equal, a nation to be feared? Certainly for these reasons use and possession of the machine will increase in the world beyond any natural economic ratio, and both the power and profit of empire will cease.