Potsdam is the complete control we have now obtained over these
essential supplies. We can, if we choose, cut off Germany altogether
from these vital economic necessities, if she does not consent to
abandon militant imperialism for some more civilized form of government.
We hope that this war will end in that renunciation, and that Germany
will re-enter the community of nations. But whether that is so or not,
whether Germany is or is not to be one of the interested parties in the
African solution, the fact remains that it is impossible to contemplate
a continuing struggle for the African raw material supply between the
interested Powers. Sooner or later that means a renewal of war.
International trade rivalry is, indeed, only war--_smouldering_. We
need, and Labour demands, a fair, frank treatment of African trade, and
that can only be done by some overriding regulative power, a Commission
which, so far as I can see, might also be the same Commission as that we
have already hypothesized as being necessary to control the Customs in
order to prevent gun-running and the gin trade. That Commission might
very conveniently have a voice in the administration of the great
waterways of Africa (which often run through the possessions of several
Powers) and in the regulation of the big railway lines and air routes
that will speedily follow the conclusion of peace.

Now this I take it is the gist of the Labour proposal. This--and no more
than this--is what is intended by the "international control of tropical
Africa." _I do not read that phrase as abrogating existing sovereignties
in Africa_. What is contemplated is a delegation of authority. Every one
should know, though unhappily the badness of our history teaching makes
it doubtful if every one does know, that the Federal Government of the
United States of America did not begin as a sovereign Government, and
has now only a very questionable sovereignty. Each State was sovereign,
and each State delegated certain powers to Washington. That was the