Just note what is involved. This war was fought to destroy the doctrine that might is right. Our power, we say, gives us access to the wealth of the world; others shall be excluded. Then we are using our power to deny to some millions the most elemental of all rights, the right to existence. By the economic use of our military power (assuming that military power is as effective as we claim) we compel some millions to choose between war and penury or starvation; we give to war, in their case, the justification that it is on behalf of the bread of their children, their livelihood. Let us compare France's position. Unlike the German, the French population has hardly increased at all in recent generations. In the years immediately preceding the War, indeed, it showed a definite decline, a tendency naturally more marked since the War. This low birth-rate has greatly concerned French statesmen, and remedies have been endlessly discussed, with no result. The causes are evidently very deep-rooted indeed. The soil which has been inherited by this declining population is among the richest and most varied in the world, producing in the form of wines, brandies, and certain other luxuries, results which can be duplicated nowhere else. It stretches almost into the sub-tropics. In addition, the nation possesses a vast colonial empire--in Algeria, Tunis, Morocco (which include some of the greatest food-growing areas in the world), Madagascar, Equatorial Africa, Cochin-China; an empire managed, by the way, on strongly protectionist principles. We have thus on the one side a people of forty millions with no tendency to increase, mainly not industrial (because not needing to be), possessing undeveloped areas capable, in their food and mineral resources (home and colonial), of supporting a population very many times its size. On the other hand is a neighbouring group, very much larger, and rapidly increasing, occupying a poorer and smaller territory. It is unable to subsist at modern standards on that territory without a highly-developed industry. The essential raw materials have passed into the hands of the smaller group. The latter on grounds of self-defence, fearing to be outnumbered, may withhold those materials from the larger group; and its right so to do is to be unquestioned. Does any one really believe that Western Society could remain stable, resting on moral foundations of this kind? Can one disregard primary economic need in considering the problem of preserving the Europe of 'free and independent national states' of Mr. Asquith's phrase?[29]