ABSTRACT
The difference in economic conditions is vast. The evil post-war system of economic nationalism has not improbably already passed its zenith. The discovery of an adequate basis of international exchange proceeds more rapidly than could have been hoped before the economic blizzard of 1928. In the world-movement, the result was to make Great Britain the predominant state. Its political institutions were held to contain the secret of combining liberty with order. Parliamentary democracy, as the Victorians conceived it, had obvious and outstanding merits. It had the great virtue of immediate intelligibility. The Courts, the Press, the educational system, the armed forces of the state, even, in large degree, the bureaucracy, were instruments operating towards their defeat. If they maintained law and order, they maintained that subtle atmosphere upon which the security of economic privilege depended. The Industrial Revolution brought the middle classes to power, and they evolved a form of state capitalist democracy which seemed most suited to their security.
