ABSTRACT
True to the political tradition, the Covenant provides for enforcing the peace by recourse to arms and commercial hostilities, but it contemplates no measures for avoiding war by avoiding the status quo out of which the great war arose. The great war was precipitated by the malign growth of just such a commercialised nationalism within this industrial system, and was fought to a successful issue as a struggle of industrial forces and with the purpose of establishing an enduring peace of industrial prosperity and content; at least so they say. It should accordingly have seemed reasonable to entrust the settlement to those men who know something about the working and requirements of this industrial system on which the welfare of mankind finally turns. By and large, neither the wishes nor the welfare of the soldiers, the workmen, or the industrial system as a going concern have visibly been consulted in the drafting of this Covenant.
