If the political control of economic operations were as simple a matter as in our minds we generally make it, these objections would be sound. As it is, none of them would in practice invalidate the general proposition I have laid down. The division of labor in the modern world is so complex--the simplest operation of foreign trade involving not two nations merely, but many--that the mere military control of one party to an operation where many are concerned could ensure neither shifting of the consumption nor the monopolization of the profit within the limits of the conquering group. Here is a German manufacturer selling cinematograph machines to a Glasgow suburb (which, incidentally, lives by selling tools to Argentine ranchers, who live by selling wheat to Newcastle boiler-makers). Assuming even that Germany could transfer the surplus spent in cinematograph shows to Germany, what assurance has the German manufacturer in question that the enriched Germans will want cinematograph films? They may insist upon champagne and cigars, coffee and Cognac, and the French, Cubans, and Brazilians, to whom this "loot" eventually goes, may not buy their machinery from Germany at all, much less from the particular German manufacturer, but in the United States or Switzerland. The redistribution of the industrial rôles might leave German industry in the lurch, because at best the military power would only be controlling one section of a complex operation, one party to it out of many. When wealth was corn or cattle, the transference by political or military force of the possessions of one community to another may have been possible, although even then, or in a slightly more developed period, we saw the Roman peasantry ruined by the slave exploitation of foreign territory. How far this complexity of the international division of labor tends to render futile the other contrivances of conquest such as exclusive markets, tribute, money indemnity, etc., succeeding chapters may help to show. CHAPTER V FOREIGN TRADE AND MILITARY POWER Why trade cannot be destroyed or captured by a military Power--What the processes of trade really are, and how a navy affects them--_Dreadnoughts_ and business--While _Dreadnoughts_ protect British trade from hypothetical German warships, the real German merchant is carrying it off, or the Swiss or the Belgian--The "commercial aggression" of Switzerland--What lies at the bottom of the futility of military conquest--Government brigandage becomes as profitless as private brigandage--The real basis of commercial honesty on the part of Government.