The necessary co-operation, whether as between nations or groups within each nation, cannot be compelled by physical coercion, though disruptive forces inseparable from the use of coercion can paralyse co-operation. Allied preponderance of power over Germany does not suffice to obtain indemnities, or even coal in the quantities demanded by the Treaty. The output of the workers in Great Britain would not necessarily be improved by adding to the army or police force. As interdependence increases, the limits of coercion are narrowed. Enemies that are to pay large indemnities must be permitted actively to develop their economic life and power; they are then so potentially strong that enforcement of the demands becomes correspondingly expensive and uncertain. Knowledge and organisation acquired by workers for the purposes of their labour can be used to resist oppression. Railwaymen or miners driven to work by force would still find means of resistance. A proletarian dictatorship cannot coerce the production of food by an unwilling peasantry. The processes by which wealth is produced have, by increasing complexity, become of a kind which can only be maintained if there be present a large measure of voluntary acquiescence, which means, in its turn, confidence. The need for that is only made the more imperative by the conditions which have followed the virtual suspension of the gold standard in all the belligerent States of Europe, the collapse of the exchanges and other manifestations of instability of the currencies. European statesmanship, as revealed in the Treaty of Versailles, and in the conduct of international affairs since the Armistice, has recognised neither the fact of interdependence--the need for the economic unity of Europe--nor the futility of attempted coercion. Certain political ideas and passions give us an unworkable Europe. What is their nature? How have they arisen? How can they be corrected? These questions are part of the problem of sustenance; which is the first indispensable of civilisation. CHAPTER II (pp. 61-80) THE OLD ECONOMY AND THE POST-WAR STATE The trans-national processes which enabled Europe to support itself before the War were based mainly on private exchanges prompted by the expectation of individual advantage. They were not dependent upon political power. (The fifteen millions for whom German soil could not provide lived by trade with countries over which Germany had no political control, as a similar number of British live by similar non-political means.) The old individualist economy has been largely destroyed by the State Socialism introduced for war purposes: the nation, taking over individual enterprise, became trader and manufacturer in increasing degree. The economic clauses of the Treaty, if enforced, must prolong this tendency, rendering a large measure of such Socialism permanent.