TECHNOLOGY, WAR, AND GOVERNMENT 531
In a twentieth-century OikoumenS that, since ajd. 1947, had been
virtually partitioned into an American and a Russian sphere of influence,
there were at least two pawns on the board that imperilled the main-
tenance of peace between the two rival Powers through being assets on
which neither Power's hold was secure, and consequently being objects
for which the two Powers were bound to compete. One of these dis-
putable assets was the industrial war-potential of Europe, which at this
date amounted in the aggregate—including the Russian as well as the
American sphere of Europe—to more than a quarter of the total
industrial war-potential of the World; the other disputable asset was
the man-power of the non-Western and non-Russian peasant countries
in Asia, Africa, and Indian America (from Mexico to Paraguay in-
clusive), which amounted in the aggregate to about three-quarters of
the living generation of Mankind. In a.d. 1952 each of these two assets
was partly in American and partly in Russian hands; if either of them
were to fall wholly into the hands of only one of the two competitors
for possession, the effect might be to give the Russo-American balance
a decisive inclination in the successful competitor's favour; and, in
either field, the hold of one of the two competitors was precarious.
While the United States had good reason for fearing that the secession
of China from the American to the Russian camp in a.d. 1948-9 might
be followed by further landslides in the same direction in other Asian
or African countries, the Soviet Union had no less good reason for
fearing that she might not be able permanently to retain her control
over those eastern fringes of the Western Society's Continental Euro-
pean patrimony on which she had imposed her domination during the
last phase of the Second World War. Thus either Power was vulnerable,
on one of two critical fronts, to the danger of formidable encroachments
at its expense on the rival Power's part; and the consequent instability
of the current balance made it difficult to hold the political scales even,
and proportionately difficult to keep the political temperature low.
A Russian observer, drawing an interim balance sheet in a.d. 1952,
and entering in his credit column the accession of China over against
an entry in his debit column recording the defection of Jugoslavia,
might find it hard to say whether, on balance, the Soviet Union had
been a loser or a gainer. If the triumph of Communism in China were
indeed an augury of what was to come in the South-East Asian countries,
in India, in Pakistan, in Persia, and in an Arab World extending west-
ward from the oil-fields of 'Iraq and Sa'udi Arabia to the Atlantic
seaboard of Morocco, this might seem in Russian eyes to be a winning
card on a long view; for, in a competition for the allegiance of all
Mankind between Communism and a traditional Western way of life,
the suffrages of a peasant three-quarters of Mankind might be expected
to be the determining factor in the long run; and, in appealing to this
vast primitive electorate, Russia enjoyed advantages that America lacked.
The chief of these Russian advantages was that Russia herself, till
yesterday, had been one of the primitive peasant countries at the mercy
of a Western Society which had outstripped the rest of the World
in its technological progress; and that, since yesterday, Russia had