breaks down in practice. To stand aside and do nothing under the plea that every people must be left free to manage its own affairs, and that intervention is wicked, is to repeat the tragic mistake of the Manchester School in the economic world which protested against any interference by the State to protect workmen ... from the oppression and rapacity of employers, on the ground that it was an unwarranted interference with the liberty of the subject and the freedom of trade and competition. To prevent adventurers from entering the territory is impossible, unless there is some civilized authority within it to stop them through its police. To shut off a backward people from all contact with the outside world by a kind of blockade is not only unpracticable, but is artificially to deny them the chances of education and progress. The establishment of a genuine government by a people strong enough and liberal enough to ensure freedom under the law and justice for all is the only solution.... They must undertake this duty, not from any pride of dominion, or because they wish to exploit their resources, but in order to protect them alike from oppression and corruption, by strict laws and strict administration, which shall bind the foreigner as well as the native, and then they must gradually develop, by education and example, the capacity in the natives to manage their own affairs. Thus we see that the progress in knowledge and in the control of their environment made by the civilized peoples has, in fact and inevitably, led to their leadership in government also, and given them the predominant voice in laying down the lines along which the common life of mankind is to develop. If we are to look for the mainspring of the world's activities, for the place where its new ideas are thought out, its policies framed, its aspirations cast into practical shape, we must not seek it in the forests of Africa or in the interior of China, but in those busy regions of the earth's surface where the knowledge, the industries, and all the various organizations of government and control find their home. Because organization is embodied knowledge, and because knowledge is power, it is the Great Powers, as we truly name them,[58] who are predominantly responsible for the government of the world and for the future of the common life of mankind.