To show that such an agreement would not ask a sacrifice of vital national interest, that indeed the economic advantages which could be exacted by military preponderance were exceedingly small or non-existent, seemed the first indispensable step towards bringing some international code of economic right within the area of practical politics, of giving it any chance of acceptance by public opinion. Yet the effort towards that was disparaged and derided as 'materialistic.' One hoped at least that this disparagement of material interest as a motive in international politics might give us a peace settlement which would be free from it. But economic interest which is 'sordid' when appealed to as a means of preserving the peace, becomes a sacred egoism when invoked on behalf of a policy which makes war almost inevitable. Why did it create such bitter resentment before the War to suggest that we should discuss the economic grounds of international conflict--why before the War were many writers who now demand that discussion so angry at it being suggested? Among the very hostile critics of _The Great Illusion_--hostile mainly on the ground that it misread the motive forces in international politics--was Mr J. L. Garvin. Yet his own first post-war book is entitled: _The Economic Foundations of Peace_, and its first Chapter Summary begins thus:-- 'A primary war, largely about food and raw materials: inseparable connection of the politics and economics of the peace.' And his first paragraph contains the following:-- 'The war with many names was in one main aspect a war about food supply and raw materials. To this extent it was Germany's fight to escape from the economic position of interdependence without security into which she had insensibly fallen--to obtain for herself independent control of an ample share in the world's supplies of primary resources. The war meant much else, but it meant this as well and this was a vital factor in its causes.' His second chapter is thus summarised:-- 'Former international conditions transformed by the revolution in transport and telegraphic intelligence; great nations lose their former self-sufficient basis: growth of interdependence between peoples and continents.... Germany without sea power follows Britain's economic example; interdependence without security: national necessities and cosmopolitan speculation: an Armageddon unavoidable.'