costs are also considered, the balance of loss becomes incalculably greater. Those who urge that through an indemnity, war can be made to "pay" (and it is for them that this chapter is written), have before them problems and difficulties--difficulties of not merely a military, but of a financial and social character--of the very deepest kind. It was precisely in this section of the subject that German science failed in 1870. There is no evidence that much progress has been made in the study of this phase of the problem by either side since the war--indeed, there is plenty of evidence that it has been neglected. It is time that it was scientifically and systematically attacked. Those who wish well for Europe will encourage the study, for it can have but one result: to show that less and less can war be made to pay; that all those forces of our world which daily gain in strength make it, as a commercial venture, more and more preposterous. The study of this department of international polity will tend to the same result as the study of any of its facets: the undermining of those beliefs which have in the past so often led to, and are to-day so often claimed as the motives likely to lead to, war between civilized peoples. CHAPTER VII HOW COLONIES ARE OWNED Why twentieth-century methods must differ from eighteenth--The vagueness of our conceptions of statecraft--How Colonies are "owned"--Some little recognized facts--Why foreigners could not fight England for her self-governing Colonies--She does not "own" them, since they are masters of their own destiny--The paradox of conquest: England in a worse position in regard to her own Colonies than in regard to foreign nations--Her experience as the oldest and most practised colonizer in history--Recent French experience--Could Germany hope to do what England cannot do? The foregoing chapters dispose of the first six of the seven propositions outlined in Chapter III. There remains the seventh, dealing with the notion that in some way England's security and prosperity would be threatened by a foreign nation "taking our Colonies from us"--a thing which we are assured her rivals are burning to do, as it would involve the "breaking up of the British Empire" to their advantage. Let us try to read some meaning into a phrase which, however childish it may appear on analysis, is very commonly in the mouths of those who are responsible for British political ideas.