86 THE SHADOW OF THE WORLD’S FUTURE 
the populations she has carried. These have been due 
to the greater personal security reached, and to the 
improvements in irrigation, etc. We are perhaps apt 
to forget these benefits, when attention is focused 
upon limitations. As a matter of fact material benefits 
have been conferred by such migrations as those from 
West to East. It should perhaps be added that 
clashes of interests between peoples are inescapable 
howsoever they are organised. The practical problem 
is “how to minimise them,” not “how they can be 
completely eliminated.” All forms of civilisation have 
their defects. This is a matter, however, which is 
outside the limits of the question we are discussing. 
In connection with what has been said above, it is 
appropriate to observe that the cost of preparedness to 
attack, or to defend, has no intrinsic limit. The cost 
is an ever-increasing one and becomes appalling. Its 
essential character tends to render it provocative. 
Moreover history shows that, for the purposes of war, 
a people will spend unhesitatingly amounts which they 
would not merely grudge, but would actually refuse, 
for the promotion of the arts of peace and for beneficent 
ends. The colossal expenditures in preparing for war, 
and also in war itself, would be far more than adequate 
for all the higher efforts of mankind. War 1s an 
uneconomic way of deciding issues, and it must either 
cease or be more terrible than ever before. 
The studies of racial characteristics, of the possibilities 
of beneficent human intercourse, of the problems of 
miscegenation, of a better personal, communal, national 
and international hygiene, of eliminating or ameliorat- 
ing the more terrible diseases and scourges of mankind, 
of international economics, and of international re- 
lations generally, would all become financially possible 
were war assuredly obsolete. All these things, though 
of the highest importance and incalculable value to 
mankind, are allowed to remain relatively in abeyance,