ENDS AND MEANS
of the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth century,
they profess and doubtless genuinely feel a profound moral
indignation. Meanwhile, they have begun to address
themselves, reluctantly but with determination, to the task
of beating the Fascist powers at their own game. Like
the Fascist states, they are preparing for war. But modern
war cannot be waged or even prepared except by a highly
centralized executive wielding absolute power over a docile
people. Most of the planning which is going on in the
democratic countries is planning designed to transform
these countries into the likeness of totalitarian com-
munities organized for slaughter and rapine. Hitherto
this transformation has proceeded fairly slowly. Belief in
our ideal postulates has acted as a brake on fascization,
which h#s had to advance gradually and behind a smoke-
screen. But if war is declared, or even if the threat of war
becomes more serious than at present, the process will
become open and rapid. *The defence of democracy
against Fascism' entails inevitably the transformation of
democracy into Fascism.
Most of the essays in large-scale planning attempted by
the democratic powers have been dictated by the desire
to achieve military efficiency. Thus, the attempt to co-
ordinate the British Empire into a self-sufficient economic
Unit was a piece of planning mainly dictated by military
considerations. Still' more specifically military in character
have been the plans applied to the armament industries,
not only in Great Britain, but also in France and the other
democratic countries, for the purpose of increasing pro-
duction. Like the Fascist plans for heightening military
efficiency such essays in planning are bound to make
matters worse, not better. By transforming the British
Empire from a Free Trade area into a private property
protected by tariff walls, the governments concerned have
made it absolutely certain that foreign hostility to the