'The vital interdependence here indicated, cutting athwart frontiers, is largely the work of the last forty years; and it has, during that time, so developed as to have set up a financial interdependence of the capitals of the world, so complex that disturbance in New York involves financial and commercial disturbance in London, and, if sufficiently grave, compels financiers of London to co-operate with those of New York to put an end to the crisis, not as a matter of altruism, but as a matter of commercial self-protection. The complexity of modern finance makes New York dependent on London, London upon Paris, Paris upon Berlin, to a greater degree than has ever yet been the case in history. This interdependence is the result of the daily use of those contrivances of civilisation which date from yesterday--the rapid post, the instantaneous dissemination of financial and commercial information by means of telegraphy, and generally the incredible progress of rapidity in communication which has put the half-dozen chief capitals of Christendom in closer contact financially, and has rendered them more dependent the one upon the other than were the chief cities of Great Britain less than a hundred years ago.--(pp. 49-50.) 'Credit is merely an extension of the use of money, and we can no more shake off the domination of the one than we can of the other. We have seen that the bloodiest despot is himself the slave of money, in the sense that he is compelled to employ it. In the same way no physical force can in the modern world set at naught the force of credit. It is no more possible for a great people of the modern world to live without credit than without money, of which it is a part.... The wealth of the world is not represented by a fixed amount of gold or money now in the possession of one Power, and now in the possession of another, but depends on all the unchecked multiple activities of a community for the time being. Check that activity, whether by imposing tribute, or disadvantageous commercial conditions, or an unwelcome administration which sets up sterile political agitation, and you get less wealth--less wealth for the conqueror, as well as less for the conquered. The broadest statement of the case is that all experience--especially the experience indicated in the last chapter--shows that in trade by free consent carrying mutual benefit we get larger results for effort expended than in the exercise of physical force which attempts to exact advantage for one party at the expense of the other.'--(pp. 270-272.)