The demonstration of the futility of conquest rested mainly on these facts. After conquest the conquered people cannot be killed. They cannot be allowed to starve. Pressure of population on means of subsistence has not been reduced, but probably increased, since the number of mouths to fill eliminated by the casualty lists is not equivalent to the reduced production occasioned by war. To impose by force (e.g. exclusion from raw materials) a lower standard of living, creates (_a_) resistance which involves costs of coercion (generally in military establishments, but also in the political difficulties in which the coercion of hostile peoples--as in Alsace-Lorraine and Ireland--generally involves their conqueror), costs which must be deducted from the economic advantage of the conquest; and (_b_) loss of markets which may be indispensable to countries (like Britain) whose prosperity depends upon an international division of labour. A population that lives by exchanging its coal and iron for (say) food, does not profit by reducing the productivity of subject peoples engaged in food production. In _The Great Illusion_ the case was put as follows:-- 'When we conquer a nation in these days, we do not exterminate it: we leave it where it was. When we "overcome" the servile races, far from eliminating them, we give them added chances of life by introducing order, etc., so that the lower human quality tends to be perpetuated by conquest by the higher. If ever it happens that the Asiatic races challenge the white in the industrial or military field, it will be in large part thanks to the work of race conservation, which has been the result of England's conquest in India, Egypt, and Asia generally.'--(pp. 191-192.)