the law of diminishing returns, are apt to bring them into conflict with other nations.
As nations advance towards civilisation it becomes less needful for them to contend with one another for land and food to support their increasing numbers, because their increased control of the industrial arts enables them to gain what they want by conquering nature instead of conquering their fellow-men.
This truth does not indeed disclose itself readily with its full brilliancy to the eyes of modern civilised peoples, whose greed for foreign wealth and foreign lands seems as fruitful a source of war as in more primitive times. The illusion that it is necessary and advantageous to fight for new territory and distant markets, while leaving most imperfectly developed the land and markets of their own nation, is slow to be dispelled. Its sources have been already explored; it has been traced to the dominance of class interests in national politics. Democracy alone, if it be attainable, will serve to fasten on the national mind the full economy of substituting the inner struggle with the natural environment for the outer struggle with other nations.