THE PLANNED SOCIETY
Empire shall be greatly increased. While the English
possessed undisputed command of 4 the sea, they con-
ciliated world opinion by leaving the doors of their
colonies wide open to foreign trade. Now that command
of the sea has been lost, those doors are closed. In other
words, England invites the world's hostility at the very
moment when it has ceased to be in a position to defy
that hostility. Greater folly could scarcely be imagined.
But those who think in terms of militarism, inevitably
commit such follies.
Consider the second case. Rearmament at the present
rate and on the present enormous scale must have one of
two results. Either there will be general war within a
very short time; for si vis lellum^ para lellum. Or, if war
is postponed for a few years, the present rate of rearmament
will have to be slowed down and an economic depression
at least as grave as that of 1929 will descend upon the
world. Economic depression will create unrest; unrest
will speed up the fascization of the democratic countries;
the fascization of the democratic countries will increase
the present probability of war to an absolute certainty.
So much for planning undertaken for specifically military
purposes.
Many pieces of planning, however, have not been
specifically military in character.. They have been devised
by governments primarily for the purpose of counter-
acting the effects of economic depression. But, unfor-
tunately, under the present dispensation, such plans must
be conceived and carried out in the context of militarism
and nationalism. This context imparts to every plan in
the international field a quality that, however good the
intentions of the planners, is essentially militaristic. (Here
it is worth while to enunciate a general truth, which the
older anthropologists, such as Frazer, completely failed to
grasp—the truth that a given habit, rite, tradition takes
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