bed as "bunk," and of propaganda designed to encourage the faith which consists in believing what ain't so, there emerges the outline of a titanic struggle; a tripartite struggle in which, from its very nature, one side, that of the common man, has been and indeed is, not merely unorganised in tis own interests buy largely unconscious of them; while another consistes of highly intelligent and completely unscrupulous men, carrying on an internecine warfare throughout the ages for ultimate power. The present crisis is quite probably a culminating peak of this long struggle and we may see the emergence of a third party which perhaps has been overlooked.

To one group, the common man, with whom we may include all but a tiny fraction of the population of every country at every time, is simply "cannon fodder." His place in the scheme of thingsis to be forced into functional associations -- Armies, "Labour," "Civil Services, etc. which can be swung like a club, and, on the whole, with as little comprehension as a club possesses as to the real objective for which it is swung. I do not believe that national boundaries have, for many centuries at least, been in any sense coterminous with any of these groups, or that, to one of them, the general well-being of the population has at any time been more than an unavoidable bribe to obtain the necessary aquiescence from national, as distinct from international "leaders."

Now it may be reiterated, that the forced functionalising process, which alone makes the common man the collective tool of the Enemy arises out of the necessity for bed, board and clothes in security. Man wants much more than that. But afterwards, and the things he wants afterwards are most dangerous to the Enemy. So that the obvious policy is to keep him busy with bed, board and clothes in perpetuity.

Perhaps the first essential in considering this situation is to bear steadily in mind the idea of continuity. To repeat Clausewitz (and empahsise the permanently "military" nature of the problem) "war is the pursuit of policy by other means." Not necessarily the policy of those who fight the war. But certainly the policy of those who promote war, either actively, or passively by opposing the rectification of those factors which force aggression; all of which, I think, can be traced to those who are in control of the international financial system, and other international forces.

That is to say, it is an elementary error to regard the course of events as being normally peaceful, but regrettably, punctuated by wars.

It is, of course, nothing of the kind. In the present war, the blockade of Germany merely differs in method, but not at all in kind, from "peaceful" trade competition. And the desperate penalties which Germany would exact from Great Britain and France, if the victory in the military phase of the war were to go to her, would merely be an intensified form of the treatment meted out to the vanquished by financial gangsters (of whom I am confident that Hitler is merely a tool) -- obliteration or absorbtion, whichever served best for instance the march of the Vanderbilts, Morgans, Schiffs, towards "control."

To say that all this merely illustrates the universal depravity of man, is to take refuge in one of those cheap generalizations which have been used to obscure the facts. So far from this being the explanation, on the contrary, it is the almost universal desire of mankind to be left to cultivate his garden which has made him the tool of the clever intriguer. Many years ago, I asked a cultured and highly competent American why he didn't go into politics. He replied that he was not squeamish but he had to draw the line somewhere. Which largely accounts for American politics.

The principles of organisation are so unfamiliar to those whose business does not involve the study of them, that I must ask to be excused if I appear to labour the point:

That modern war is impossible without centralization and that the object of modern war is centralization.

It is failure to grasp this fundamental truth which gives rise to much false antitheses as, for example, "monarchy or money-power," "socialism or capitalism."

Monopoly of Power is the Enemy, and all Power maniacs are His Servants. "All power [over men] corrupts, and Absolute Power corrupts absolutely." If Finance governs the Statte, the Banker is the Satanic incarnation. If the State is supreme, Socialism is the Devil. It is quite possible, as has been the case both in France and the United States for some time, to have two almost balanced Forces: in France, the "Comite des Forges" and "la Haute Banque" and, in America, Morgans and the Harriman, Kuhn Loeb Group, alternately using the State mechanisms to carry on a private war and, in the process, fostering the Right and Left, Fascist or Communist, "popular" movments whose leaders are invariably power maniacs -- a statement which can easily be checked by a consideration of the individuals who represent such movements in Great Britain. In every case the result is much the same to the duped citizen, just as a "Liberal" or "Conservative" government in England or Canada usually means only a re-shuffle of Ministers.

The remedy is exactly what you would expect it to be, once it is admitted that the disease is monopolistic. It is de-centralisation.

There must be a very rapidly growing minority, if not already a majority, who while not perhaps phrasing the matter in exact terminology, would agree with the esseiontal contention. "But," they would say, "Nothing can be done about it. The whole trend is towards larger units, towards the suppression of individuality. you can't alter the trend of events.

That is exactly what it is hoped you will believe, so that your initiative will be paralysed. The use of the word "trend" to suggest a natural force against which it is useless to struggle, is of Wall Street origin.

Now, if you were told that the trend of events was for motor-cars to get smaller and smaller, and you had devoted any attention to the subject, you would probably reply, "Up to a point, in England, yes, in America, no." And you would go on to explain that the artificially restricted British motor-car was the reslut of taxation which had practically ruined the British export trade in motor-cars, and resulted in the Englishman having to pay as much for something a little larger than a perambulator, driven by a toy four-cylinder engine, as the American pays for an eight cylinder limousine with a 120 H.P engine. You would assert, in fact, that the "trend" was not natural, it was consciously produced. And you would possibly have something to say about the reputaiton for philanthropy build up on the money obtained by selling you a toy motor-car at the price of one of reasonable size, and then arranging that by taxation and high petrol profits, it costs you rather more to run than would a Rolls-Royce in America.

It is not too much to say that an International organisation having almost unlimited control of money, and in consequence, of the Press, can produce almost any "trend" which may serve its purpose. What it cannot do, however is to avoid the natural consequences of the policies it pursues.

Now, in a static world, the world in which the world-Planners think, centralization is a workable scheme. And it must be remembered that this Plan for world dominion is a very old Plan, and was conceived in a world which was so nearly static that the India of say, the Mutiny, was, outside the towns occupied by Europeans, unchanged from that invaded by Alexander the Great.

In such a world, absentee management does not matter. All industry and agriculture was standardized, and the fundamental idea of government was not "interference in business," which is quite modern, it was simply "sacrifice," i.e., taxation.

But the modern world is not static, it is dynamic. The idea that it is possible to govern the intricate actions of large populations from one political centre, is a chimera. You can try, however, and the results of trying to do an impracticable thing are visible everywhere.

It would be easy to demonstrate the hopless inefficiency of absentee management in almost any sphere of human activiyt. Absentee management of the individual's credit has made him a proletarian; absentee management of his corn-milling has given him bread which his own doctor will tell him is barely fit for human consumptiojn; absentee management of his right to bear arms in his own defence has taken the right from him, and landed him in the greatest war of all time.

While the press and the radio, controlled by groups of financiers battling desperately for world power (so that, as they imagine resistance will be futiel) are using every artifice to convince us that the millenium awaits the inauguration of the World State, the emergence of what are, in my opinion, irresistible centrifugal forces, can be seen everywhere. The "United" States, always held up as a shining example of the beauties of Federal Government, was probably never more disunited in the whole of its history, than it is now. Ireland is split in two havles; India seems strangely cold to the advantages of rule from Whitehall; the Canadian Provinces are more determined than ever that the pwoers of the Federal Government at Ottawa shall be drastically diminished, rather than extended; and the Austrailian States re in almost open revolt against Canberra.