But if disarmament is likely to compel a new type of international dealing, it is plain that there must be some kind of international clearing house. We have gone past the stage at which one nation can transact a bargain with another which will not affect the interests of a third party. The shrinkage of the world has thrown the nations too closely together for any of them to suppose that they can determine their policies in isolation and carry them through piece-meal with this one and that, without reference to the rest. Preferential trade agreements, for instance, are not merely an affair of the contrasting parties; they affect all the nations. And it is impossible any longer—in the absence of _force majeure_—to establish relations of that kind without the consent of the rest of the world. The case for an international clearing house is indeed at this time of day irresistible. Moreover, the immediate stress of the food-situation throughout the world is certain to require some such organ for the co-ordination and the distribution of the available food-supply. It seems likely that the supply of food for the world will be for some years inadequate to the need without careful distribution; and it will require the most careful organisation and rationing of what food there is if the people of some parts of the world are to escape very great and protracted hardship. For this, a clearing house is necessary. Fortunately we have the foundations of this organisation already laid—on the one hand in the machinery of international distribution created by Mr. Hoover, and on the other in Mr. David Lubin’s far-seeing institution of an international bureau for the survey of the world’s grain resources. From a central organisation of this kind the world will need to receive its food for some time to come.