ABSTRACT
The picture of a world divided between saturated and non-saturated Powers which confront one another, more or less angrily, is scarcely accurate. A largish group of states are content; they have no ambition either to establish or to maintain an empire; they stand between the expansionist Powers of the past who are saturated and the disgruntled late-comers. The ranks of both of these groups grow and diminish, since change is at work uninterruptedly. The central political problem of our time is whether existing boundaries must be moved, and whether this must be done by war. The age of empire-building on the vertical plane 1 has gone for good. Primary colonization is no longer possible, since no objects suitable for it are available. The exchange of smallish colonial possessions in a peaceful way is quite feasible, but transactions of this sort are too insignificant to satisfy ambitions and to change the international balance. But empire-making on the horizontal plane may go on, by federation or by world-wide wars.
