common purpose, there remained just France and England--and their relations, too, were becoming daily worse; in fundamental disagreement over Poland, Turkey, Syria, the Balkan States, Austria, and Germany itself, its indemnities, and its economic treatment generally. Was this the instrument for the conquest of half a world? But the political disintegration of the Alliance was not the only obstacle to a thorough-going application of military force to the problem of Germany and Russia. By the very terms of the theory of security by preponderant power, Germany had to be weakened economically, for her subjugation could never be secure if she were permitted to maintain an elaborate, nationally organised economic machinery, which not only gives immense powers of production, capable without great difficulty of being transformed to the production of military material, but which, through the organisation of foreign trade, gives influence in countries like Russia, the Balkans, the Near and Far East. So part of the policy of Versailles, reflected in the clauses of the Treaty already dealt with, was to check the economic recovery of Germany and more particularly to prevent economic co-operation between that country and Russia. That Russia should become a 'German Colony' was a nightmare that haunted the minds of the French peace-makers.[53] But, as we have already seen, to prevent the economic co-operation of Germany and Russia meant the perpetuation of the economic paralysis of Europe. Combined with the maintenance of the blockade it would certainly have meant utter and perhaps irretrievable collapse. Perhaps the Allies at the beginning of 1919 were in no mood to be greatly disturbed by the prospect. But they soon learned that it had a very close bearing both on the aims which they had set before themselves in the Treaty and, indeed, on the very problem of maintaining military predominance.