ENDS AND MEANS
society; I refer to the field of armament manufacture.
A slight change, for example, in the design of internal-
combustion engines—so slight as to have no appreciable
effect on the numbers of men employed in their con-
struction—may bring (and indeed has actually brought)
millions of innocent men, women and children a long step
nearer to death by fire, poison and explosion. In this case,
of course, the problem is not one for technicians; it is a
problem that can be solved only when sufficient numbers
of men of good will are prepared to make use of the
methods by which, and by which alone, it can be solved.
For the nature of these methods I must refer the reader
to the chapters, on War and Individual Work for Reform.
Rises and falls in the birth-rate are likely to produce
social changes even more far-reaching than those produced
by technological advances. It is about as certain as any
future contingency can be that, half a century from now,
the population of the industrialized countries of Western
Europe will have declined, both absolutely and in relation
to that of the countries of Eastern Europe. Thus, when
Great Britain has only thirty-five-million inhabitants, of
whom less than a tenth will be under fifteen and more
than a sixth over sixty, Russia will have about three hundred
millions. Will a country so (relatively speaking) sparsely
inhabited as the Britain of 1990 be able to keep up its
position as a * First-class, Imperial Power'? In the past
Sweden, Portugal and Holland attempted to keep up the
status of a Great Power on the basis of a population that
was absolutely and relatively small. All of them failed in
the attempt. If only for demographical reasons, Britain
should take all possible steps to avoid a struggle for
imperial power which, if not immediately fatal, will almost
certainly prove fatal a couple of generations hence. In a
militaristic world, relatively, under-populated countries
cannot hope (unless protected by more powerful neigh-
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