are hoping to do in Middle Europe and possibly Russia. Over against these three hungry and thwarted powers stand four satiated powers, possessing between them the greater part of the world's surface and most of the raw materials indispensable to modem industry. These four powers are the British Empire, the United States, France and Russia. To these must be added Holland, Belgium and Portugal-three small powers whose considerable colonial possessions are guaranteed (for as long as it suits them to do so) by England and France. The - satisfied powers enjoy their present privileged position in regard to materials, land and markets, partly as a result of historical accident, partly in virtue of a policy of conquest pursued above all during the nineteenth century. So long as these four powers remain possessed of what they now own and so long as they persist in their present monopolistic policies, the three great unsatisfied powers must of necessity remain unsatisfied. Objectively, this means that the standard of living among the unsatisfied must continue steadily to decline; subjectively, it means that they will cherish a feeling of intense resentment against the satisfied, together with a passionate conviction that they have been given less than justice. The re-distribution of territory after the Napoleonic wars was ethnically unsound. Ruled by alien govern• ments, large bodies of men and women-Italians, Greeks, Poles and many others-felt that they were being treated unjustly; and this sense of injustice was so intense that people preferred the risks and horrors of war to a peace which they felt to be humiliating. The peace of Versailles was, ethnically speaking, a tolerably good peace. Economically, however, it was a thoroughly bad peace. The peoples of three great countries (as well as of numerous small countries) feel that they have been and are being treated unjustly. And so intense is this feeling, so painful is the process of gradual and steady impoverishment to which they are being subjected, that for great masses of these people war--even modem war-seems preferable to peace, as they know it to-day. 25 Bib oteca Gino Bianco
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