In the way of the necessary co-operation stands the Balkanisation of Europe. Why are we Balkanised rather than Federalised? Why do Balkan and other border States fight fiercely over this coalfield or that harbour? Why does France still oppose trade with Russia, and plot for the control of an enlarged Poland or a reactionary Hungary? Why does America now wash her hands of the whole muddle in Europe? Because everywhere the statesmen and the public believe that if only the power of their State were great enough, they could be independent of rival States, achieve political and economic security and dispense with agreements and obligations. If they had any vivid sense of the vast dangers to which reliance upon isolated power exposed any State, however great; if they had realised how the prosperity and social peace of their own States depended upon the reconciliation and well-being of the vanquished, the Treaty would have been a very different document, peace would long since have been established with Russia, and the moral foundations of co-operation would be present. By every road that presented itself, _The Great Illusion_ attempted to reveal the vital interdependence of peoples--within and without the State--and, as a corollary to that interdependence, the very strict limits of the force that can be exercised against any one whose life, and daily--and willing--labour is necessary to us. It was not merely the absence of these ideas but the very active presence of the directly contrary ideas of rival and conflicting interest, which explained the drift that the present writer thought--and said so often--would, unless checked, lead Western civilisation to a vast orgy of physical self-destruction and moral violence and chaos. The economic conditions which constitute one part of the vindication of _The Great Illusion_ are of course those described in the first part of this book, particularly in the first chapter. All that need be added here are a few suggestions as to the relationship between those conditions and the propositions we are concerned to verify. As bearing upon the truth of those propositions, we cannot neglect the condition of Germany.