The impossibility and the undesirability of setting up any system for changing frontiers, such as has been discussed, are equally evident.
There is another phase of this general question of the _status { 39} quo_ which is sometimes discussed by those who seem to have a natural antipathy to the words and that is what I may call the "raw materials" phase. There is, let us say, no coal in Switzerland, and yet Switzerland must have coal for her people to exist. There are no oil wells in Norway, and yet in Norway there must be, if civilization is to continue, automotive engines. It is obvious that there can be no physical change in such a _status quo_. People who live in the territory that is now Switzerland must get their coal somewhere else, and motor transport in Norway must get its gasoline from other lands.
What is the international phase of such situations as this? There are perhaps three possibilities. One is a war of conquest commenced by a country in the situation of Norway in order to obtain dominion over foreign oil lands; the second is some kind of agreement such as has been suggested in a vague way by the Italians and others for some sort of an international supervision in such matters; and the third is that the situation shall continue as it is now--a matter of bargain and sale, of supply and demand.
There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that, among these three, the first would be as impossible as it would be wicked; the second is wholly outside the realm of practical politics for centuries to come; the third is the _status quo_, which has not in any case of world peace resulted in any serious injustice.
Of course, if we go beyond such cases as Norway and Switzerland and take countries much less favored, it is always a mystery as to why people live in them. It is very difficult to understand, for example, why there are settlers in Labrador, or why people are fond of Greenland as a home; none the less these things are so. And under the existing system of exchange of commodities there has perhaps never been a time when even the people who live in these countries without certain particular natural resources have not generally been able to obtain sufficient of them as a result of their own efforts in the occupations which the character of those lands permits.