-16-
 
      
 
 
for obviously a country so vulnerable to air attack cannot 
      be the center of a really stable world system.
 
      
 
 
One must, therefore, envisage the possibility, at best, that 
      the totalitarian powers may confront Britain and France with 
      a military and aerial superiority so great that the latter will 
      be forced progressively to yield strategic positions vital to 
      the future of the United States as a world power. The United 
      States would, thereafter, be unable to rely upon the armed resources 
      of Britain and France in a crisis- any more than they can now 
      rely upon the armed resources of Czechoslovakia.
 
      
 
 
At the most the actual defeat of Britain and France in war 
      would mean not only the occupation of their Colonial Empire and 
      the possible subjection of South Africa and the Antipodes, but 
      also the placing at the disposal of the Axis powers the resources 
      and strategic positions of the Dutch and Belgian Colonial Empires 
      and the disappearance as independent entities of the small states 
      of Europe. Indeed, it is by no means beyond the bounds of possibility 
      that, in the