ENDS AND MEANS
on its peculiar significance from its context. Two peoples
may have what is, according to Frazerian ideas, the same
custom; but this does not mean that the custom in question
will signify the same thing to these two peoples. If the
contexts in which this * identical' custom is placed happen
to be different—as in fact they generally are—then it will
carry widely different significances for the two peoples.
Applying this generalization to our particular problem,
we see that a non-militaristic plan carried out in a militaristic
context is likely to have a significance and results quite
different from the significance and results of the same plan
in a non-militaristic context.)
Owing to the fact that even the democratic peoples are
to some extent militarists and devotees of the idolatry of
exclusive nationalism, almost all the economic planning
undertaken by their governments has seemed to foreign
observers imperialistic in character and has in fact resulted
in a worsening of the international situation. Governments
have used tariffs, export bounties, quotas and exchange
devaluation as devices for improving the lot of their
subjects; in the context of the world as it is to-day, these
plans have seemed to other nations acts of deliberate ill-
will meriting reprisals in kind. Reprisals have led to
counter-reprisals. International exchanges have become
more and more difficult. Consequently yet furtherplanning
has had to be resorted to by each of the gowrnments
concerned for' the protection of its own subjects—yet
further planning which arouses yet bitterer resentment
abroad and so brings war yet a little nearer.
We are confronted here by the great paradox of con-
temporary planning. Comprehensive planning by indi-
vidual nations results in international chaos, and the
degree of international chaos is in exact proportion to
the number, completeness and efficiency of the separate
national plans.
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