Decentralisation and ruralisation are imperative for successful defence against foreign aggression; they alone can defy modern warfare. The centralised industries provide an easy target for air-bombing so that a few bombs can successfully dislocate the whole national economy. Thus, from the strategic point of view a country with its large-scale industries concentrated in a few big towns becomes highly vulnerable. The remarkable organisation of the Industrial Co-operatives in China is, perhaps, the chief factor which enabled the Chinese to withstand Japanese aggression for so many years. The Indusco movement, made almost all the Chinese villages self-sufficient in regard to the necessities of life by spreading a network of cottage industries in the remotest corners. “In a world subject to periodical outbreaks of intense and prolonged war, so far as possible the production of essential requirements like food-stuffs and clothing must be available locally, and dependence on distant markets might be fatal in times of serious stress. When decentralisation of production is becoming a dire military necessity it would be sheer madness to neglect the admirable system of decentralised production already existing in this country.”[79]
