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A Postscript Chapter 591Russia and China, and would overshadow with a threat of absorptionSouth-Western Asia and Tibet and might be pushedto overrun all up to the whole frontier of India, menacing hersecurity and that of Western Asia with the possibility of aninvasion and an overrunning and subjection by penetration oreven by overwhelming military force to an unwanted ideology,political and social institutions and dominance of this militantmass of Communism whose push might easily prove irresistible.In any case, the continent would be divided between two hugeblocs which might enter into active mutual opposition and thepossibility of a stupendous world-conflict would arise dwarfinganything previously experienced: the possibility of any worldunionmight, even without any actual outbreak of hostilities,be indefinitely postponed by the incompatibility of interests andideologies on a scale which would render their inclusion in asingle body hardly realisable. The possibility of a coming intobeing of three or four continental unions, which might subsequentlycoalesce into a single unity, would then be very remoteand, except after a world-shaking struggle, hardly feasible.At one time it was possible to regard as an eventual possibilitythe extension of Socialism to all the nations; an internationalunity could then have been created by its innate tendencieswhich turned naturally towards an overcoming of the dividingforce of the nation-idea with its separatism and its turn towardscompetitions and rivalries often culminating in open strife; thiscould have been regarded as the natural road and could haveturned in fact into the eventual way towards world-union. But,in the first place, Socialism has under certain stresses provedto be by no means immune against infection by the dividingnational spirit and its international tendency might not surviveits coming into power in separate national States and a resultinginheritance of competing national interests and necessities: theold spirit might very well survive in the new socialist bodies.But also there might not be or not for a long time to come aninevitable tide of the spread of Socialism to all the peoples of theearth: other forces might arise which would dispute what seemedat one time and perhaps still seems the most likely outcome of