Each of the important producing countries must provide itself with the essential raw materials--coal, iron, copper, cotton, rubber, wheat, etc., upon which the continuance of its industrial life depends. Consequently each of these countries busies itself to secure the control of the largest possible reserves of the raw materials most needed by its own industries. The case of petroleum is peculiarly instructive. When it became apparent, in the early years of the present century that oil burning ships, motor vehicles and air craft were bound to play a determining part in the economic life of the immediate future, various interests such as the Shell Transport, Royal Dutch and the Standard Oil, with the open or tacit backing of their respective state departments, entered on a campaign to secure the world's supply of petroleum. In Mexico, Central America, the Near East, Russia and the United States this struggle has been waged, and it still continues to be one of the most active contests for economic power that has been fought in recent times. Petroleum-hunger is only one of the many economic factors that drive modern nations. The efforts to control the coal and iron of Alsace and Lorraine, the Saar and the Ruhr undoubtedly played a leading role in making the War of 1914 and the Peace of 1919. The partition of Upper Silesia was based on the same contest for iron and coal. Wherever the coal veins or iron deposits are, there, likewise, are gathered together the representatives of industrial enterprise, which depends for its life upon iron and coal. As the resources of the earth become better known, and their extent more definitely established, there is every reason to believe that, with the continuance of the present economic system, the necessity for exploiting them will become greater, and the attempts to dominate them will become more aggressive. Whether the object of the contest be trade, markets, investment opportunities or resources, the result is the same--rivalry, antagonism, bitterness, hatred, conflict. Probably it is fair to say that these economic rivalries constitute the largest single force now operating to keep people apart and to continue the economic desolation and chaos under which the world is suffering. 5. _Distribution of the World's Wealth_ There is another problem of world scope--the concentration of wealth in a very few countries. At the present moment the wealth of the world is distributed roughly as follows: Great Britain 120 billions of dollars France 100 " " " United States 330 " " " ---- Total 550 " " "