Not one man or woman in a million, English or other, would wittingly inflict the suffering of starvation upon a single child, if the child were visible to his eyes, present in his mind, and if the simple human fact were not obscured by the much more complex and artificial facts that have gathered round our conceptions of patriotism. The heaviest indictment of the military-nationalist philosophy we are discussing is that it manages successfully to cover up human realities by dehumanising abstractions. From the moment that the child becomes a part of that abstraction--'Russia,' 'Austria,' 'Germany'--it loses its human identity, and becomes merely an impersonal part of the political problem of the struggle of our nation with others. The inverted moral alchemy, by which the golden instinct that we associate with so much of direct human contact is transformed into the leaden cruelty of nationalist hate and high statecraft, has been dealt with at the close of Part I. When in tones of moral indignation it is declared that Englishmen 'do not make war on women and children,' we must face the truth and say that Englishmen, like all peoples, do make such war. An action in public policy--the proclamation of the blockade, or the confiscation of so much tonnage, or the cession of territory, or the refusal of a loan--these things are remote and vague; not only is the relation between results and causes remote and sometimes difficult to establish, but the results themselves are invisible and far away. And when the results of a policy are remote, and can be slurred over in our minds, we are perfectly ready to apply, logically and ruthlessly, the most ferocious of political theories. It is of supreme importance then what those theories happen to be. When the issue of war and peace hangs in the balance, the beam may well be kicked one way or the other by our general political philosophy, these somewhat vague and hazy notions about life being a struggle, and nature red of tooth and claw, about wars being part of the cosmic process, sanctioned by professors and bishops and writers. It may well be these vague notions that lead us to acquiesce in the blockade or the newest war. The typhus or the rickets do not kill or maim any the less because we do not in our minds connect those results with the political abstractions that we bandy about so lightly. And we touch there the greatest service which a more 'economic' treatment of European problems may perform. If the Treaty of Versailles had been more economic it would also have been a more humane and human document. If there had been more of Mr Keynes and less of M. Clemenceau, there would have been not only more food in the world, but more kindliness; not only less famine, but less hate; not only more life, but a better way of life; those living would have been nearer to understanding and discarding the way of death. Let us summarise the points so far made with reference to the 'economic' motive.