But when some vital need becomes obvious and we find that force simply cannot fulfil it, we then try other methods, and manage to restrain our impulse sufficiently to do so. If we simply must have a man's help, and we find we cannot force him to give it, we then offer him inducements, bargain, enter a contract, even though it limits our independence. Stable international co-operation cannot come in any other way. Not until we realise the failure of national coercive power for indispensable ends (like the food of our people) shall we cease to idealise power and to put our most intense political emotions (like those of patriotism) behind it. Our traditions will buttress and 'rationalise' the instinct to power until we see that it is mischievous. We shall then begin to discredit it and create new traditions. An American sociologist (Professor Giddings of Columbia University) has written thus:-- 'So long as we can confidently act, we do not argue; but when we face conditions abounding in uncertainty, or when we are confronted by alternative possibilities, we first hesitate, then feel our way, then guess, and at length venture to reason. Reasoning, accordingly, is that action of the mind to which we resort when the possibilities before us and about us are distributed substantially according to the law of chance occurrence, or, as the mathematician would say, in accordance with "the normal curve" of random frequency. The moment the curve is obviously skewed, we decide; if it is obviously skewed from the beginning, by authority, or coercion, our reasoning is futile or imperfect. So, in the State, if any interest or coalition of interests is dominant, and can act promptly, it rules by absolutist methods. Whether it is benevolent or cruel, it wastes neither time nor resources upon government by discussion; but if interests are innumerable, and so distributed as to offset one another, and if no great bias or overweighting anywhere appears, government by discussion inevitably arises. The interests can get together only if they talk. If power shall be able to dictate, it will also rule, and the appeal to reason will be vain.' This means that a realisation of interdependence--even though it be subconscious--is the basis of the social sense, the feeling and tradition which make possible a democratic society, in which freedom is voluntarily limited for the purpose of preserving any freedom at all.