It should be urged that the time has come when we should take a more comprehensive, judicious and constructive outlook upon the world--its natural resources and its folk. We are inclined to think that Nature's resources, because partly unexplored here and there, are "exhaustless." The Spanish American people are fond of speaking of their _inagotable riqueza natural_--their "inexhaustible natural resources"; but these are not inexhaustible, as I have elsewhere remarked. We need a survey, a stocktaking, of the earth's resources; we need to conserve, to economize them. It is a remarkable fact, however, that the latest pronouncement of the League of Nations contains no idea or suggestion of a fundamental policy of retrenchment, conservation, development of these potentialities. The pronouncement, which seems to be largely an echo of President Wilson's original "Fourteen Points"--which doubtless had among them certain merits at the time of their enunciation--does not get beyond advocating "increased production," the "entire removal of all economic barriers," in this respect. In brief, it is the old dreary doctrine, largely, of creating and selling, of forcing goods on communities and folk who do not necessarily need them, without any scientific outlook upon the native potentialities and requirements, or the world's natural divisions--a dreadful "internationalism" which we hoped was declining. The League of Nations, as regards its economic knowledge and spirit, is a magnificent opportunity wasted, or will be so unless it develops into something far more fundamentally intelligent. This matter of outlook by so important a body is of vital importance to the Latin American States, as to all others. The exploitation of the great remaining natural resources of these countries--as is the case with many others--cannot be successfully done under the present relations of labour and capital. Capital must have its fair reward, labour must be fairly paid; but the two things at present clash, and we shall have to find the way out before the enormous, but not fruitless, wilderness of South America and Mexico can yield up what they contain. The cream of the earth's resources has been skimmed everywhere; the remainder calls for much more scientific consideration. Indeed, it is impossible to forecast what the future of the world--which has been shaken to its foundations by recent events--is to be. Civilization may advance or it might recede, or hang fire for centuries. That depends upon the efforts and the conscience of mankind. It may be that a quieter, less strenuous life awaits it, with less of material activity and more of moral and intellectual growth. In fact, some of us who have studied the world in its economic and political aspects, will doubt if the present type of civilization has not reached its apogee and is to enter on some other phase, a phase which we believe and hope is to be of the nature indicated.