part I

, p. 625). The production for the United States was 1,927.9 million pounds (62 per cent of the whole). The second largest producer, Japan, turned out 179.2 million pounds.

The precious metals, gold and silver, are largely produced in the United States. The world's gold production for 1917 was 423.6 million dollars (_Mineral Resources_, 1917, p. 613). Africa produced half of this amount (214.6 million dollars). The United States was second with a production of 83.8 million dollars (20 per cent of the whole). The same publication (p. 615) gives the world's silver production in 1917 as 164 million ounces. 77.1 million ounces (43 per cent) were produced in the United States. The second largest producer was Mexico, 31.2 million ounces; and the third Canada, with 22.3 million ounces. These three North American countries produced 76 per cent of the world's output of silver.

Judge Gary, speaking at the Annual Meeting of the Iron and Steel Institute (1920) put the situation in this summary form:--

As frequently stated, notwithstanding the United States has only 6% of the world's population and 7% of the world's land, yet we produce:

20% of the world's supply of gold, 25% of the world's supply of wheat, 40% of the world's supply of iron and steel, 40% of the world's supply of lead, 40% of the world's supply of silver, 50% of the world's supply of zinc, 52% of the world's supply of coal, 60% of the world's supply of aluminum, 60% of the world's supply of copper, 60% of the world's supply of cotton, 66% of the world's supply of oil, 75% of the world's supply of corn, 85% of the world's supply of automobiles.

With the exception of rubber, practically all of the essential raw materials and food products upon which modern industrial society depends are produced largely in the United States. With less than a sixteenth of the world's population, the United States produced from a fifth to two-thirds of most of the world's essential products.

5. _Shipping_

The rapid increase in the foreign trade of the United States created a demand for American shipping facilities. Before the Civil War the United States held a place as a maritime nation. Between the Civil War and the war with Spain the energies of the American people were devoted to internal improvement. With the advent of expansion that followed the Spanish-American War, came an insistent demand that the United States develop a merchant marine adequate to carry its own foreign trade.

The United States Commissioner of Navigation in his report for 1917 (p. 78) gives the net gross tonnage of steam and sailing vessels in 1914 as 45 million tons in all. The tonnage of Great Britain was 19.8 million tons; of Germany 4.9 million tons; of the United States 3.5 million tons; of Norway 2.4 million tons; of France 2.2 million tons; of Japan 1.7 million tons, and of Italy 1.6 million tons.

The war brought about great changes in the distribution of the world's shipping. Germany was practically eliminated as a shipping nation. The necessity of recouping the submarine losses, and of transporting troops and supplies led the United States to adopt a ship-building program that made her the second maritime country of the world. Lloyd's Register of Shipping gives the steam tonnage of the United Kingdom as 18,111,000 gross tons in June, 1920. For the same month the tonnage of the United States is given as 12,406,000 gross tons. Japan comes next with a tonnage of 2,996,000 gross tons. According to the same authority the United Kingdom had 41.6 per cent of the world's tonnage in 1914 and 33.6 per cent in 1920; while the United States had 4.7 per cent of the world's tonnage in 1914 and 24 per cent in 1920.

6. _Wealth and Income_

The economic advantages of the United States enumerated in this chapter inevitably are reflected in the figures of national wealth and national income. While these figures are estimates rather than conclusive statements they are, nevertheless, indicative of a general situation.

During the war a number of attempts were made to approximate the pre-war wealth and income of the leading nations. Perhaps the most ambitious of these efforts was contained in a paper on "Wealth and Income of the Chief Powers" read before the Royal Statistical Society. (See _The London Economist_, May 24, 1919, pp. 958-9.) This and other estimates were compiled by L. R. Gottlieb and printed in the _Quarterly Journal of Economics_ for Nov. 1919. Mr. Gottlieb estimates the pre-war national wealth of Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Russia, Belgium, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Bulgaria at 366,100 million dollars. At the same time the wealth of the United States was estimated at 204,400 million dollars. Thus the wealth of the United States was equal to about 36 per cent of the total wealth of the great nations in question.

The same article contains an estimate of pre-war national incomes for these great powers. The total is placed at 81,100 million dollars. The income for the United States is placed at 35,300 million dollars, or more than 43 per cent of the total.

The war has made important changes in the wealth and income of the principal powers. The wealth and income of Europe have been reduced, while the wealth and income of the United States have been greatly increased. This increase is rendered doubly emphatic by the demoralization in foreign exchange which gives the American dollar a position of unique authority in the financial world.

The latest wealth estimates (_Commerce and Finance_, May 26, and July 28, 1920) in terms of dollars at their purchasing-power value, makes the wealth of the whole British Empire 230 billions of dollars; of France, 100 billions; of Russia, 60 billions; of Italy, 40 billions; of Japan, 40 billions; of Germany, 20 billions, and of the United States, 500 billions. These figures are subject to alteration with the alteration of the exchange rates, but they indicate the immense advantage that is possessed by the business men of the United States over the business men of any or of all of the other nations of the world.

Before the war, the British were the chief lenders in the international field. In 1913 Great Britain had about 20 billions of dollars of foreign investments, as compared with 9 billions for France and about 6 billions for Germany. At the end of 1920, the British foreign investments had shrunk to a fraction of their former amount, while the United States, from the position of a debtor nation, had become the leading investing nation of the world, with over 9 billions of dollars loaned to the Allied governments; with notice loans estimated at over 10 billions; with foreign investments of 8 billions, and goods on consignment to the extent of 2 billions.

The United States therefore began the year 1921 with a greater financial lead, by several times over, than that which she held before the war, when she was credited with a greater wealth and a larger income than that of any other nation in the world. The extent of the advantage enjoyed by the United States at the end of 1920 cannot be stated with any final accuracy, but its proportions are staggering.

7. _The Economic Position of the United States_

Economically the United States is a world power. She occupies one of the three great geographical areas in the temperate zone. If she were to include Canada, Mexico and Central America--the territory north of the Canal Zone--she would have the greatest unified body of economic advantage anywhere in the world.

The United States is rich in practically all of the important industrial resources. She has a large, relatively homogeneous population, a great part of which is directly descended from the conquering races of the world. Almost all of the essential raw materials are produced in the United States, and in relatively large quantities. The period since the Spanish War has witnessed a rapid increase in wealth production. The war of 1914 resulted in an even greater increase in shipping. The investable surplus is greater in the United States than in any other nation, and in amount as well as in percent the national debt is less than that in any other important nation except Japan. Economically the position of the United States is unique. The masters of her industries hold a position of great advantage in the capitalist world.

XIV. THE PARTITION OF THE EARTH

1. _Economic Power and Political Authority_

Economically the United States is a world power. Her world position in politics follows as a matter of course.

While the American people were busy with internal development, they played an unimportant part in world affairs. They were not competing for world trade, because they had relatively little to export; they were not building a merchant marine because of the smallness of their trading

## activities; they were not engaged in the scramble after undeveloped

countries because, with an undeveloped country of their own, calling continually for enlarged investments, they had little surplus capital to employ in foreign enterprises.

This economic isolation of the United States was reflected in an equally thoroughgoing political isolation. With the exception of the Monroe Doctrine, which in its original form was intended as a measure of defense against foreign political and military aggression, the United States minded its own affairs, and allowed the remainder of the world to go its way. From time to time, as necessity arose, additional territory was purchased or taken from neighboring countries--but all of these transactions, up to the annexation of Hawaii (1898) were confined to the continent of North America, in which no European nation, with the exception of Great Britain, had any imperative territorial interest.

The economic changes which immediately preceded the Spanish War period commanded for the United States a place among the nations. The passing of economic aloofness marked the passing of political aloofness, and the United States entered upon a new era of international relationships. Possessed of abundant natural resources, and having through a long period of peace developed a large working capital with which these resources might be exploited, the United States, at the beginning of the twentieth century, was in a position to export, to trade and to invest in foreign enterprises.

The advent of the World War gave the United States a dramatic opportunity to take a position which she must have assumed in any case in a comparatively short time. It had, however, one signal, diplomatic advantage,--it enabled the capitalist governments of Europe to accept, with an excellent grace, the newly acquired economic prominence of the United States and to recognize her without question as one of the leading political powers. The loan of ten billions to Europe; the sending of two million men at double quick time to the battle front; the immense increases in the production of raw material that followed the declaration of war by the United States; the thoroughness displayed by the American people, once they had decided to enter the war, all played their part in the winning of the victory. There were feelings, very strongly expressed, that the United States should have come in sooner; should have sacrificed more and profiteered less. But once in, there could be no question either of the spirit of her armies or of the vast economic power behind them.

When it came to dividing the spoils of victory, the United States held, not only the purse strings, but the largest surpluses of food and raw materials as well. Her diplomacy at the Peace Table was weak. Her representatives, inexperienced in such matters, were no match for the trained diplomats of Europe, but her economic position was unquestioned, as was her right to take her place as one of the "big five."

2. _Dividing the Spoils_

The Peace Conference, for purposes of treaty making, separated the nations of the world into five classes:

1. The great capitalist nations. 2. The lesser capitalist states. 3. Enemy nations. 4. Undeveloped territories. 5. The socialist states.

The great capitalist states were five in number--Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the United States. These five states dominated the armistice commission and the Peace Conference and they were expected to dominate the League of Nations. The position of these five powers was clearly set forth in the regulations governing procedure at the Peace Conference. Rule I reads: "The belligerent powers with general interests--the United States of America, the British Empire, France, Italy and Japan--shall take part in all meetings and commissions." (_New York Times_, January 20, 1919.) Under this rule the Big Five were the Peace Conference, and throughout the subsequent negotiations they continued to act the part.

The same concentration of authority was read into the revised covenant of the League of Nations. Article 4 provides that the Executive Council of the League "shall consist of the representatives of the United States of America, of the British Empire, of France, of Italy and of Japan, together with four other members of the League." The authority of the Big Five was to be maintained by giving them five votes out of nine on the executive council of the League, no matter how many other nations might become members.

It was among the Big Five, furthermore, that the spoils of victory were divided. The Big Five enjoyed a full meal; the lesser capitalist states had the crumbs.

The enemy nations were stripped bare. Their colonies were taken, their foreign investments were confiscated, their merchant ships were appropriated, they were loaded down with enormous indemnities, they were dismembered. In short, they were rendered incapable of future economic competition. The thoroughgoing way in which this stripping was accomplished is discussed in detail by J. M. Keynes in "The Economic Consequences of the Peace" (chapters 4 and 5).

The undeveloped territories--the economic opportunities upon which the Big Five were relying for the disposal of their surplus products and surplus capital, were carved and handed about as a butcher carves a carcass. Shantung, which Germany had taken from China, was turned over to Japan under circumstances which made it impossible for China to sign the Treaty--thus leaving her territory open for further aggression. The Near East was divided between Great Britain, France and Italy. Mexico was not invited to sign the treaty and her name was omitted from the list of those eligible to join the League. The German possessions in Africa and in the Pacific were distributed in the form of "mandates" to the Great Powers. The principle underlying this distribution was that all of the unexploited territory should go to the capitalist victors for exploitation. The proportions of the division had been established, previously, in a series of secret treaties that had been entered into during the earlier years of the war.

With the Big Five in control, with the lesser capitalist states silenced; with the border states made or in the making; with the enemy reduced to economic impotence, and the unexploited portions of the world assigned for exploitation, the conference was compelled to face still another problem--the Socialist Republic of Russia.

Russia, Czar ridden and oppressed, had entered the war as an ally of France and Great Britain. Russia, unshackled and attempting self-government on an economic basis, was an "enemy of civilization." The Allies therefore supported counter-revolution, organized and encouraged warfare by the border states, established and maintained a blockade, the purpose of which was the starvation of the Russian people into submission, and did all that money, munitions, supplies, battleships and army divisions could do to destroy the results of the Russian Revolution.

The Big Five--assuming to speak for all of the twenty-three nations that had declared war on Germany--manipulated the geography of Europe, reduced their enemies to penury, disposed of millions of square miles of territory and tens of millions of human beings as a gardener disposes of his produce, and then turned their united strength to the task of crushing the only thing approaching self-government that Russia has had for centuries.

A more shameless exhibition of imperial lust is not recorded in history. Never before were five nations in a position to sit down at one table and decide the political fate of the world. The opportunity was unique, and yet the statesmen of the world played the old, savage game of imperial aggression and domination.

This brutal policy of dealing with the world and its people was accepted by the United States. Throughout the Conference her representatives occupied a commanding position; at any time they would have been able to speak with a voice of almost conclusive authority; they chose, nevertheless, to play their part in this imperial spectacle. To be sure the Senate refused to ratify the Treaty,--not because of its imperial iniquities, but rather because there was nothing in it for the United States.

3. _Italy, France and Japan_

The shares of spoil falling to Italy and France as a result of the treaty are comparatively small although both countries--and particularly France--carried a terrific war burden. Japan, the least active of any of the leading participants in the war, received territory of vast importance to her future development.

Italy,--under the secret treaty of London, signed April 26, 1915, by the representatives of Russia, France, Great Britain and Italy,--was to receive that part of Austria known as the Trentine, the entire southern Tyrol, the city and suburbs of Trieste, the Istrian Islands and the province of Dalmatia with various adjacent islands. Furthermore, Article IX of the Treaty stipulated that, in the division of Turkey, Italy should be entitled to an equal share in the basin of the Mediterranean, and specifically to the province of Adalia. Under Article XIII, "In the event of the expansion of French and English colonial domains in Africa at the expense of Germany, France and Great Britain recognize in principle the Italian right to demand for herself certain compensations in the sense of expansions of her lands in Erithria, Somaliland, in Lybia and colonial districts lying on the boundary, with the colonies of France and England." Substantially, this plan was followed in the Peace Treaty.

The territorial claims of France were simple. The secret treaties include a note from the French Minister of Foreign Affairs to the French Ambassador at Petrograd, dated February 1-14, 1917, which stated that under the Peace Treaty:

"(1) Alsace and Lorraine to be returned to France.

"(2) The boundaries will be extended at least to the limits of the former principality of Lorraine, and will be fixed under the direction of the French Government. At the same time strategic demands must be taken into consideration, so as to include within the French territory the whole of the industrial iron basin of Lorraine and the whole of the industrial coal-basin of the Saar."

The Peace Treaty confirmed these provisions, with the exception of the Saar Valley, which is to go to France for 15 years under conditions which will ultimately cause its annexation to France if she desires it. France also gained some slight territorial concessions in Africa. Her real advantage--as a result of the peace--lies in the control of the three provinces with their valuable mineral deposits.

The territorial ambitions of Japan were confined to the Far East. The former Russian Ambassador to Tokio, under date of February 8, 1917, makes the statement that Japan was desirous of securing "the succession to all the rights and privileges possessed by Germany in the Shantung province and for the acquisition of the islands north of the Equator." In a secret treaty with Great Britain, Japan secured a guarantee covering such a division of the German holdings in the Pacific.

These concessions are of great importance to Japan. By the terms of the Treaty one of her rivals for the trade of the East (Germany) is eliminated, and the territory of that rival goes to Japan. With the control of Port Arthur and Korea and Shantung, Japan holds the gateway to the heart of Northern China. The islands gained by Japan as a result of the Treaty give her a barrier extending from the Kurile Islands, near Kamchatka, through the Empire of Japan proper, to Formosa. Farther out in the Pacific, there are the Ladrones, the Carolines and the Pelew Islands, which, in combination, make a series of submarine bases that render attack by sea difficult or impossible, and that lie, incidentally, between the United States and the Philippine Islands. Japan came away from the Peace Conference with the key to the East in her pocket.

4. _The Lion's Share_

The lion's share of the Peace Conference spoil went to Great Britain. To each of the other participants, certain concessions, agreed upon beforehand, were made. The remainder of the war-spoil was added to the British Empire. This "remainder" comprised at least a million and half square miles of territory, and included some of the most important resources in the world.

The territorial gains of Great Britain cover four areas--the Near East, the Far East, Africa, and the South Pacific.

The gains of Great Britain in the Near East include Hedjez and Yemen, the control of which gives the British possession of virtually all of the territory bordering on the Red Sea. The Persian Gulf is likewise placed under British control, through her holding of Mesopotamia and her control over Persia and Oman. The eastern end of the Mediterranean is held by the British through their control of Palestine.

Thus the gateway to the East,--both by land and by sea, the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates and the basin of the Red Sea all fall into the hands of the British, who now hold the heart of the Near East. The gains of Great Britain in Africa include Togoland, German Southwest Africa and German East Africa. With these accessions of territory, Great Britain holds a continuous stretch of country from the Cape to Cairo. A British subject can therefore travel on British soil from Cape Town via the Isthmus of Suez, to Siam, covering a distance as the crow flies of something like 10,000 miles.

The British gains in the South Pacific include Kaiser Wilhelm Land and the German islands south of the Equator.

What these territorial gains mean in the way of additional resources for the industries of the home country, only the future can decide. Certain it is, that outside of the Americas, Central Europe, Russia, China and Japan, Great Britain succeeded in annexing most of the important territory of the world.

The _Chicago Tribune_, in one of its charmingly frank editorials, thus describes the gains to the British Empire as a result of the war. "The British mopped up. They opened up their highway from Cairo to the Cape. They reached out from India and took the rich lands of the Euphrates. They won Mesopotamia and Syria in the war. They won Persia in diplomacy. They won the east coast of the Red Sea. They put protecting territory about Egypt and gave India bulwarks. They made the eastern dream of the Germans a British reality.

"The British never had their trade routes so guarded as now. They never had their supremacy of the sea so firmly established. Their naval competitor, Germany, is gone. No navy threatens them. No empire approximates their size, power, and influence.

"This is the golden age of the British Empire, its Augustan age. Any imperialistic nation would have fought any war at any time to obtain such results, and as imperialistic nations count costs, the British cost, in spite of its great sums in men and money was small." (January 4, 1920.)

5. _Half the World--Without a Struggle_

Two significant facts stand out in this record of spoils distribution. One is that Great Britain received the lion's share of them in Asia and Africa. The other, that there is no mention of the Americas. Outside of the Western Hemisphere, Great Britain is mistress. In the Americas, with the exception of Canada, the United States is supreme.

There are two reasons for this. One is that Germany's ambitions and possessions included Asia and Africa primarily--and not America. The other is that the Peace Conference recognized the right of the United States to dominate the Western Hemisphere.

The representatives of the United States declared that their country was asking for nothing from the Peace Conference. Nevertheless, the insistent clamor from across the water led the American delegation to secure the insertion in the revised League Covenant of Article XXI which read: "Nothing in this covenant shall be deemed to affect the validity of international engagements, such as treaties of arbitration or regional understandings like the Monroe Doctrine for securing the maintenance of peace." This article coupled with the first portion of Article X, "The members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members of the League," guarantees to the United States complete authority over Latin America, reserving to her political suzerainty and economic priority.

The half of the earth reserved to the United States under these provisions contains some of the richest mineral deposits, some of the largest timber areas, and some of the best agricultural territory in the world. Thus at the opening of the new era, the United States, at the cost of a comparatively small outlay in men and money, has guaranteed to her by all of the leading capitalist powers practically an exclusive privilege for the exploitation of the Western Hemisphere.

XV. PAN-AMERICANISM

1. _America for the Americans_

In the partition of the earth, one-half was left under the control of the United States. Among the great nations, parties to the war and the peace, the United States alone asked for nothing--save the acceptance by the world of the Monroe Doctrine. The doctrine, as generally understood, makes her mistress of the Western Hemisphere.

The Monroe Doctrine originated in the efforts of Latin America to establish its independence of imperial Europe, and the counter efforts of imperial Europe to fasten its authority on the newly created Latin American Republics. President Monroe, aroused by the European crusade against popular government, wrote a message to Congress (1823) in which he stated the position of the United States as follows:

"The American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers."

Monroe continues by pointing out that the United States must view any act which aims to establish European authority in the Americas as "dangerous to our peace and safety."

"The United States will keep her hands off Europe; she will expect Europe to keep her hands off America," was the essence of the doctrine, which has been popularly expressed in the phrase "America for the Americans." The Doctrine was thus a statement of international aloofness,--a declaration of American independence of the remainder of the world.

The Monroe Doctrine soon lost its political character. The southern statesmen who were then guiding the destinies of the United States were looking with longing eyes into Texas, Mexico, Cuba and other potential slave-holding territory. Later, the economic necessities of the northern capitalists led them in the same direction. Professor Roland G. Usher, in his "Pan-Americanism" (New York, The Century Company, 1915, pp. 391-392) insists that the Monroe Doctrine stands "First, for our incontrovertible right of self-defense. In the second place the Monroe Doctrine has stood for the equally undoubted right of the United States to champion and protect its primary economic interest against Europe or America."

Through the course of a century this statement of defensive policy has been converted into a doctrine of economic pseudo-sovereignty. It is no longer a case of keeping Europe out of Latin America but of getting the United States into Latin America.

The United States does not fear political aggression by Europe against the Western Hemisphere. On the contrary, the aggression to-day is largely economic, and the struggle for the markets and the investment opportunities of Latin America is being waged by the capitalists of every great industrial nation, including the United States.

2. _Latin America_

Four of the Latin American countries, viewed from the standpoint of population and of immediately available assets, rank far ahead of the remainder of Latin America. Mexico, with a population in 1914-1915 of 15,502,000, had an annual government revenue of $72,687,000. The population of Brazil is 27,474,000. The annual revenue (1919) is $183,615,000. Argentine, with a population of 8,284,000, reported annual revenues of $159,000,000 (1918); and Chile, with a population of 3,870,000, had an annual revenue of $77,964,000 (1917). These four states rank in political and economic importance close to Canada.

Great Britain holds a number of strategic positions in the West Indies. Other nations have minor possessions in Latin America. None of these possessions, however, is of considerable economic or political importance. There remain Bolivia, Uruguay, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela, and the Central American states. The most populous of these countries is Peru (5,800,000 persons). All of the Central American states combined have a population of less than 6,000,000. The annual revenues of Uruguay (population 1,407,000) are $30,453,000 (1918-19). The combined government revenues of all Central America are less than twenty-five millions. (_Statistical Abstract of the U. S._, 1919, p. 826ff.)

Compared with the hundred million population of the United States; its estimated wealth (1918) of 250 billions; and its federal revenues of a billion and a half in 1916, the Latin American republics cut a very small figure indeed. The United States, bristling with economic surplus and armed with the Monroe Doctrine, as accepted and interpreted in the League Covenant, is free to turn her attention to the rich opportunities offered by the undeveloped territory stretching from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn. What is there to hinder her movements in this direction? Nothing but the limitation on her own needs and the adherence to her own public policies. This vast area, containing approximately nine million square miles (three times the area of continental United States), has a population of only a little over seventy millions. The entire government revenues of the territory are in the neighborhood of six hundred million, but so widely scattered are the people, so sharp are their nationalistic differences, and so completely have they failed to build up anything like an effective league to protect their common interests, that skillful maneuvering on the part of American economic and political interests should meet with no effectual or thoroughgoing opposition.

The "hands off America" doctrine which the United States has enunciated, and which Europe has accepted, means first that none of the Latin American Republics is permitted to enter into any entangling alliances without the approval of the United States. In the second place it means that the United States is free to treat all Latin American countries in the same way that she has treated Cuba, Hayti and Nicaragua during the past twenty years.

3. _Economic "Latin America"_

The United States is the chief producer--in the Western Hemisphere--of the manufactured supplies needed by the relatively undeveloped countries of Latin America. At the same time, the undeveloped countries of Latin America contain great supplies of ores, minerals, timber and other raw materials that are needed by the expanding manufacturing interests of the United States. The United States is a country with an investible surplus. Latin America offers ample opportunity for the investment of that surplus. Surrounding the entire territory is a Chinese wall in the form of the Monroe Doctrine--intangible but none the less effective.

Before the outbreak of the Great War, European capitalists dominated the Latin American investment market. The five years of struggle did much to eliminate European influence in Latin America.

The situation was reviewed at length in a publication of the United States Department of Commerce "Investments in Latin America and the British West Indies," by Frederick M. Halsey (Washington Government Printing Office, 1918):

"Concerning the undeveloped wealth of various South American countries," writes Mr. Halsey, "it may be said that minerals exist in all the Republics, that the forest resources of all (except possibly Uruguay) are very extensive, that oil deposits have been found in almost every country and are worked commercially in Argentine, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, and that there are lands available for the raising of live stock and for agricultural purposes" (p. 20).

As to the pre-war investments, Mr. Halsey points out that "Great Britain has long been the largest investor in Latin America" (p. 20). The total of British investments he places at 5,250 millions of dollars. A third of this was invested in Argentine, a fifth in Brazil and nearly a sixth in Mexico. French investments are placed at about one and a half billions of dollars. The German investments were extensive, particularly in financial and trading institutions. United States investments in Latin America before the war "were negligible" (p. 19) outside of the investments in the mining industry and in the packing business.

Just how much of a shift the war has occasioned in the ownership of Latin American railways, public utilities, mines, etc., it is impossible to say. Some such change has occurred, however, and it is wholly in the interest of the United States.

Generalizations which apply to Latin America have no force in respect to Canada. The capitalism of Canada is closely akin to the capitalism of the United States.

Canada possesses certain important resources which are highly essential to the United States. Chief among them are agricultural land and timber. There are two methods by which the industrial interests of the United States might normally proceed with relations to the Canadian resources. One is to attack the situation politically, the other is to absorb it economically. The latter method is being pursued at the present time. To be sure there is a large annual emigration from the United States into Canada (approximately 50,000 in 1919) but capital is migrating faster than human beings.

The Canadian Bureau of Statistics reports (letter of May 20, 1920) on "Stocks, Bonds and other Securities held by incorporated and joint stock Companies engaged in manufacturing industries in Canada, 1918," as owned by 8,130,368 individual holders, distributed geographically as follows: Canada, $945,444,000; Great Britain, $153,758,000; United States, $555,943,000, and other countries, $17,221,322. Thus one-third of this form of Canadian investment is held in the United States.

4. _American Protectorates_

The close economic inter-relations that are developing in the Americas, naturally have their counter-part in the political field. As the business interests reach southward for oil, iron, sugar, and tobacco they are accompanied or followed by the protecting arm of the State Department in Washington. Few citizens of the United States realize how thoroughly the conduct of the government, particularly in the Caribbean, reflects the conduct of the bankers and the traders.

Professor Hart in his "New American History" (American Book Co., 1917, p. 634) writes, "In addition the United States between 1906 and 1916 obtained a protectorate over the neighboring Latin American States of Cuba, Hayti, Panama, Santo Domingo and Nicaragua. All together these five states include 157,000 square miles and 6,000,000 people." Professor Hart makes this statement under the general topic, "What America Has Done for the World."

The Monroe Doctrine, logically applied to Latin America, can have but one possible outcome. Professor Chester Lloyd Jones characterizes that outcome in the following words, "Steadily, quietly, almost unconsciously the extension of international responsibility southward has become practically a fixed policy with the State Department. It is a policy which the record of the last sixteen years shows is followed, not without protest from influential factions, it is true, but none the less followed, by administrations of both parties and decidedly different shades within one of the parties.... Protests will continue but the logic of events is too strong to be overthrown by traditional argument or prejudice." ("Caribbean Interests." New York, Appleton, 1916, p. 125.)

Latin America is in the grip of the Monroe Doctrine. Whether the individual states wish it or not they are the victims of a principle that has already shorn them of political sovereignty by making their foreign policy subject to veto by the United States, and that will eventually deprive them of control over their own internal affairs by placing the management of their economic activities under the direction of business interests centering in the United States. The protectorate which the United States will ultimately establish over Latin America was forecast in the treaty which "liberated" Cuba. The resolution declaring war upon Spain was prefaced by a preamble which demanded the independence of Cuba. Presumably this independence meant the right of self-government. Actually the sovereignty of Cuba is annihilated by the treaty of July 1, 1904, which provides:

"Article I. The Government of Cuba shall never enter into any treaty or compact with any foreign power or powers which will impair or tend to impair the independence of Cuba, nor in any matter authorize or permit any foreign power or powers to obtain by colonization or for military or naval purposes, or otherwise, lodgement in, or control over any portion of said island."

The most drastic limitations upon Cuba's sovereignty are contained in Article 3 which reads, "the Government of Cuba consents that the United States may exercise the right to intervene for the preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property and individual liberty, and for discharging the obligation with respect to Cuba imposed by the Treaty of Paris on the United States now to be assumed and undertaken by the Government of Cuba." Under this article, the United States, at her discretion, may intervene in Cuba's internal affairs.

Under these treaty provisions the Cuban Government is not only prevented from exercising normal governmental functions in international matters, but if a change of internal government should take place which in the opinion of the United States jeopardized "life, property and individual liberty" such a government could be suppressed by the armed forces of the United States and a government established in conformity with her wishes. Theoretically, Cuba is an independent nation. Practically, Cuba has signed away in her treaty with the United States every important attribute of sovereignty.

The fact that Cuba was a war-prize of the United States might be advanced as an explanation of her anomalous position, were it not for the relations now existing between the Dominican Republic, Hayti and Nicaragua on the one hand and the United States on the other. The United States has never been at war with any of these countries, yet her authority over them is complete.

The Convention between the United States and the Dominican Republic, proclaimed July 25, 1907, gave the United States the right to appoint a receiver of Dominican customs in order that the financial affairs of the Republic might be placed on a sound basis. This appointment was followed in 1916 by the landing of the armed forces of the United States in the territory of the Dominican Republic. On November 29, 1916, a military government was set up by the United States Marine Corps under a proclamation approved by the President. "This military government at present conducts the administration of the government" (Letter from State Department, September 29, 1919).

The proclamation issued by the Commander of the United States Marine Corps and approved by the President, cited the failure of the Dominican government to live up to its treaty obligations because of internal dissensions and stated that the Republic is made subject to military government and to the exercise of military law applicable to such occupation. Dominican statutes "will continue in effect insofar as they do not conflict with the objects of the Occupation or necessary relations established thereunder, and their lawful administration will continue in the hands of such duly authorized Dominican officials as may be necessary, all under the oversight and control of the United States forces exercising Military Government." The proclamation further announces that the Military Government will collect the revenues and hold them in trust for the Republic.

Following this proclamation Captain H. S. Knapp issued a drastic order providing for a press censorship. "Any comment which is intended to be published on the attitude of the United States Government, or upon anything connected with the Occupation and Military Government of Santo Domingo must first be submitted to the local censor for approval. In case of any violation of this rule the publication of any newspaper or periodical will be suspended; and responsible persons,--owners, editors, or others--will further be liable to punishment by the Military Government. The printing and distribution of posters, handbills, or similar means of propaganda in order to disseminate views unfavorable to the United States Government or to the Military Government in Santo Domingo is forbidden." (Order secured from the Navy Department and published by The American Union against Militarism, Dec. 13, 1916.)

A similar situation exists in Hayti. The treaty of May 3, 1916, provides that "The Government of the United States will, by its good officers, aid the Haitian Government in the proper and efficient development of its agricultural, mineral and commercial resources and in the establishment of the finances of Hayti on a firm and solid basis." (Article I) "The President of Hayti shall appoint upon nomination by the President of the United States a general receiver and such aids and employees as may be necessary to manage the customs. The President of Hayti shall also appoint a nominee of the President of the United States as 'financial adviser' who shall 'devise an adequate system of public accounting, aid in increasing revenues' and take such other steps 'as may be deemed necessary for the welfare and prosperity of Hayti.'" (Article II.) Article III guarantees "aid and protection of both countries to the General Receiver and the Financial Adviser." Under Article X "The Haitian Government obligates itself ... to create without delay an efficient constabulary, urban and rural, composed of native Haitians. This constabulary shall be organized and officered by Americans." The Haitian Government under Article XI, agrees not to "surrender any of the territory of the Republic by sale, lease or otherwise, or jurisdiction over such territory, to any foreign government or power" nor to enter into any treaty or contract that "will impair or tend to impair the independence of Hayti." Finally, to complete the subjugation of the Republic, Article XIV provides that "should the necessity occur, the United States will lend an efficient aid for the preservation of Haitian independence and the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property and individual liberty."

A year later, on August 20, 1917, the _New York Globe_ carried the following advertisement:--

FORTUNE IN SUGAR

"The price of labor in practically all the cane sugar growing countries has gone steadily up for years, except in Hayti, where costs are lowest in the world.

"_Hayti now is under U. S. Control._

"The Haitian-American corporation owns the best sugar lands in Hayti, owns railroads, wharf, light and power-plants, and is building sugar mills of the most modern design. There is assured income in the public utilities and large profits in the sugar business. We recommend the purchase of the stock of this corporation. Proceedings are being taken to list this stock on the New York Stock Exchange.

"Interesting story 'Sugar in Hayti' mailed on request.

"P. W. Chapman & Co., 53 William St., N. Y. C."

Hayti remained "under United States control" until the revelations of the summer of 1920 (see _The Nation_, July 10 and August 28, 1920), when it was shown that the natives were being compelled, by the American forces of occupation, to perform enforced labor on the roads and to accept a rule so tyrannous that thousands had refused to obey the orders of the military authorities, and had been shot for their pains. On October 14, 1920, the _New York Times_ printed a statement from Brigadier General George Barnett, formerly Commandant General of the Marine Corps, covering the conditions in Hayti between the time the marines landed (July, 1915) and June, 1920. General Barnett alleges in his report that there was evidence of "indiscriminate" killing of the natives by the American Marines; that "shocking conditions" had been revealed in the trial of two members of the army of occupation, and that the enforced labor system should be abolished forthwith. The report shows that, during the five years of the occupation, 3,250 Haytians had been killed by the Americans. During the same period, the losses to the army of occupation were 1 officer and 12 men killed and 2 officers and 26 men wounded.

The attitude of the United States authorities toward the Haytians is well illustrated by the following telegram which the United States

## Acting Secretary of the Navy sent on October 2, 1915, to Admiral

Caperton, in charge of the forces in Hayti: "Whenever the Haytians wish, you may permit the election of a president to take place. The election of Dartiguenave is preferred by the United States."

The Cuban Treaty established the precedent; the Great War provided the occasion, and while Great Britain was clinching her hold in Persia, and Japan was strengthening her grip on Korea, the United States was engaged in establishing protectorates over the smaller and weaker Latin-American peoples, who have been subjected, one after another, to the omnipotence of their "Sister Republic" of the North.

5. _The Appropriation of Territory_

Protectorates have been established by the United States, where such

## action seemed necessary, over some of the weaker Latin-American states.

Their customs have been seized, their governments supplanted by military law and the "preservation of law and order" has been delegated to the Army and Navy of the United States. The United States has gone farther, and in Porto Rico and Panama has appropriated particular pieces of territory.

The Porto Ricans, during the Spanish-American War, welcomed the Americans as deliverers. The Americans, once in possession, held the Island of Porto Rico as securely as Great Britain holds India or Japan holds Korea. The Porto Ricans were not consulted. They had no opportunity for "self-determination." They were spoils of war and are held to-day as a part of the United States.

The Panama episode furnishes an even more striking instance of the policy that the United States has adopted toward Latin-American properties that seemed particularly necessary to her welfare.

Efforts to build a Panama Canal had covered centuries. When President Roosevelt took the matter in hand he found that the Government of Colombia was not inclined to grant the United States sovereignty over any portion of its territory. The treaty signed in 1846 and ratified in 1848 placed the good faith of the United States behind the guarantee that Colombia should enjoy her sovereign rights over the Isthmus. During November 1902 the United States ejected the representatives of Colombia from what is now the Panama Canal Zone and recognized a revolutionary government which immediately made the concessions necessary to enable the United States to begin its work of constructing the canal.

The issue is made clear by a statement of Mr. Roosevelt frequently reiterated by him (see _The Outlook_, October 7, 1911) and appearing in the _Washington Post_ of March 24, 1911, as follows:--"I am interested in the Panama Canal because I started it. If I had followed the traditional conservative methods I would have submitted a dignified state paper of probably two hundred pages to the Congress and the debate would have been going on yet. But I took the Canal Zone and let the Congress debate, and while the debate goes on, the Canal does also."

Article 35 of the Treaty of 1846 between the United States and Colombia (then New Grenada) reads as follows,--"The United States guarantees, positively and efficaciously to New Grenada, by the present stipulation, the perfect neutrality of the before mentioned Isthmus ... and the rights of sovereignty which New Grenada has and possesses over said territory."

In 1869 another treaty was negotiated between the United States and Colombia which provided for the building of a ship canal across the Isthmus. This treaty was signed by the presidents of both republics and ratified by the Colombian Congress. The United States Senate refused its assent to the treaty. Another treaty negotiated early in 1902 was ratified by the United States Senate but rejected by the Colombian Congress. The Congress of the United States had passed an act (June 28, 1902) "To provide for the construction of a canal connecting the waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans." Under this act the President was authorized to negotiate for the building of the canal across the Isthmus of Panama. If that proved impossible within a reasonable time, the President was to turn to the Nicaragua route. The treaty prepared in accordance with this act provided that the United States would pay Colombia ten millions of dollars in exchange for the sovereignty over the Canal Zone. The Colombian Congress after a lengthy debate rejected the treaty and adjourned on the last day of October, 1902.

Rumor had been general that if the treaty was not ratified by the Colombian Government, the State of Panama would secede from Colombia, sign the treaty, and thus secure the ten millions. In consequence of these rumors, which threatened transportation across the Isthmus, American war vessels were dispatched to Panama and to Colon.

On November 3, 1902, the Republic of Panama was established. On November 13 it was recognized by the United States. Immediately thereafter a treaty was prepared and ratified by both governments and the ten millions were paid to the Government of Panama.

Early in the day of November 3, the Department of State was informed that an uprising had occurred. Mr. Loomis wired, "Uprising on Isthmus reported. Keep Department promptly and fully informed." In reply to this the American consul replied, "The uprising has not occurred yet; it is announced that it will take place this evening. The situation is critical." Later the same official advised the Department that (in the words of the Presidential message, 1904) "the uprising had occurred and had been successful with no bloodshed."

The Colombian Government had sent troops to put down the insurrection but the Commander of the United States forces, acting under instructions sent from Washington on November 2, prevented the transportation of the troops. His instructions were as follows,--"Maintain free and uninterrupted transit if interruption is threatened by armed force with hostile intent, either governmental or insurgent, at any point within fifty miles of Panama. Government forces reported approaching the Isthmus in vessels. Prevent their landing, if, in your judgment, the landing would precipitate a conflict."

Thus a revolution was consummated under the watchful eye of the United States forces; the home government at Bogota was prevented from taking any steps to secure the return of the seceding state of Panama to her lawful sovereignty, and within ten days of the revolution, the new Republic was recognized by the United States Government.[57] (Ten days was the length of time necessary to transmit a letter from Panama to Washington. Greater speed would have been impossible unless the new state had been recognized by telegraph.)

6. _The Logical Exploiters_

The people of the United States are the logical exploiters of the Western Hemisphere--the children of destiny for one half the world. They are pressed by economic necessity. They need the oil of Mexico, the coffee of Brazil, the beef of Argentine, the iron of Chile, the sugar of Cuba, the tobacco of Porto Rico, the hemp of Yucatan, the wheat and timber of Canada. In exchange for these commodities the United States is prepared to ship manufactured products. Furthermore, the masters of the United States have an immense and growing surplus that must be invested in some paying field, such as that provided by the mines, agricultural projects, timber, oil deposits, railroad and other industrial activities of Latin-America.

The rulers of the United States are the victims of an economic necessity that compels them to seek and to find raw materials, markets and investment opportunities. They are also the possessors of sufficient economic, financial, military and naval power to make these needs good at their discretion.

The rapidly increasing funds of United States capital invested in Latin-America and Canada, will demand more and more protection. There is but one way for the United States to afford that protection--that is to see that these countries preserve law and order, respect property, and follow the wishes of United States diplomacy. Wherever a government fails in this respect, it will be necessary for the State Department in cooperation with the Navy, to see that a government is established that will "make good."

Under the Monroe Doctrine, as it has long been interpreted, no Latin-American Government will be permitted to enter into entangling alliances with Europe or Asia. Under the Monroe Doctrine, as it is now being interpreted, no Latin-American people will be permitted to organize a revolutionary government that abolishes the right of private interests to own the oil, coal, timber and other resources. The mere threat of such action by the Carranza Government was enough to show what the policy of the United States must be in such an emergency.

The United States need not dominate politically her weaker sister republics. It is not necessary for her to interfere with their "independence." So long as their resources may be exploited by American capitalists; so long as the investments are reasonably safe; so long as markets are open, and so long as the other necessities of United States capitalism are fulfilled, the smaller states of the Western Hemisphere will be left free to pursue their various ways in prosperity and peace.

FOOTNOTE:

[57] For further details see "The Panama Canal" Papers presented to the Senate by Mr. Lodge, Senate Document 471, 63rd Congress, 2nd Session.

XVI. THE AMERICAN CAPITALISTS AND WORLD EMPIRE

1. _The Plutocrats Must Carry On_

The American plutocrats--those who by force of their wealth share in the direction of public policy--must carry on. They have no choice. If they are to continue as plutocrats, they must continue to rule. If they continue to rule, they must shoulder the duties of rulership. They may not relish the responsibility which their economic position has thrust upon them any more than the sojourners in Newfoundland relish the savage winters. Nevertheless, those who own the wealth of a capitalist nation must accept the results of that ownership just as those who remain in Newfoundland must accept the winter storms.

The owners of American timber, mines, factories, railroads, banks and newspapers may dislike the connotations of imperialism; may believe firmly in the principles of competition and individualism; may yearn for the nineteenth century isolation which was so intimate a feature of American economic life. But their longings are in vain. The old world has passed forever; the sun has risen on a new day--a day of world contacts for the United States.

Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts stated the matter with rare accuracy in a speech which he made during the discussion over the conquest of the Philippines. After explaining that wars come, "never ostensibly, but actually from economic causes," Senator Lodge said (_Congressional Record_, 56th Congress, 2nd Session, p. 637. January 7, 1901):

"We occupy a great position economically. We are marching on to a still greater one. You may impede it, you may check it, but you cannot stop the work of economic forces. You cannot stop the advance of the United States.... The American people and the economic forces which underlie all are carrying us forward to the economic supremacy of the world."

Senator Lodge spoke the economic truth in 1901. William C. Redfield reenforced it in an address before the American Manufacturers Export Association (_Weekly Bulletin_, April 26, 1920, p. 7): "We cannot be foreign merchants very much longer in this country excepting on a diminishing and diminishing scale--we have got to become foreign constructors; we have got to build with American money--foreign enterprises, railroads, utilities, factories, mills, I know not what, in order that by large ownership in them we may command the trade that normally flows from their operation." That is sound capitalist doctrine. Equally sound is the exhortation that follows: "In so doing we shall be doing nothing new--only new for us. That is the way in which Germany and Great Britain have built up their foreign trade."

New it is for America--but it is the course of empire, familiar to every statesman. The lesson which Bismarck, Palmerston and Gray learned in the last century is now being taught by economic pressure to the ruling class of the United States.

The elder generation of American business men was not trained for world domination. To them the lesson comes hard. The business men of the younger generation are picking it up, however, with a quickness born of paramount necessity.

2. _Training Imperialists_

Every great imperial structure has had simple beginnings. Each imperial ruling class has doubtless felt misgivings, during the early years of its authority. Hesitating, uncertain, they have cast glances over their shoulders towards that which was, but even while they were looking backward the forces that had made them rulers were thrusting them still farther forward along the path of imperial power. Then as generation succeeded generation, the rulers learned their lesson, building a tradition of rulership and authority that was handed down from father to son; acquiring a vision of world organization and world power that gave them confidence to go forward to their own undoing. The masters of public life in Rome were such people; the present masters of British economic and political affairs are such people.

American imperialists still are in the making. Until 1900 their eyes were set almost exclusively upon empire within the United States. Those who, before 1860, dreamed of a slave power surrounding the Gulf of Mexico, were thrust down and their places taken by builders of railroads and organizers of trusts. To-day the sons and grandsons of that generation of exploiters who confined their attention to continental territory, are compelled, by virtue of the organization which their sires and grandsires established, to seek Empire outside the boundaries of North America.

During the years when the leaders of American business life were spending the major part of their time in "getting rich," the sweep of social and economic forces was driving the United States toward its present imperial position. Now the position has been attained, those in authority have no choice but to accept the responsibilities which accompany it.

Economically the United States is a world power. The war and the subsequent developments have forced the country suddenly into a position of leadership among the capitalist nations. The law of capitalism is: Struggle to dispose of your surplus, otherwise you cannot survive. This law has laid its heavy hand upon Great Britain, upon France, upon Germany, and now it has struck with full force into the isolated, provincial life of the United States. It is the law--immutable as the system of gravitation. While the present system of economic life exists, this law will continue to operate. Therefore the masters of American life have no alternative. If they would survive, they must dispose of their surplus.

Politically the United States is recognized as one of the leaders of the world. Despite its tradition of isolation, despite the unwillingness of its statesmen to enter new paths, despite the indifference of its people to international affairs, the resources and raw materials required by the industrial nations of Europe, the rapidly growing surplus and the newly acquired foreign markets and investments make the United States an integral part of the life of the world.

The ruling class in the United States has no more choice than the rulers of a growing city whose boundaries are extending with each increment of population. If it is to continue as a ruling class, it must accept conditions as they are. The first of these conditions is that the United States is a world power neither because of its virtue nor because of its intelligence in the delicacies of the world politics, but because of the sheer might of its economic organization.

Economic necessity has forced the United States into the front rank among the nations of the world. Economic necessity is forcing the ruling class of the United States to occupy the position of world leadership, to strengthen it, to consolidate it, and to extend it at every opportunity. The forces that played beside the yellow Tiber and the sluggish Nile are very much the same as those which led Napoleon across the wheat fields of Europe and that are to-day operating in Paris, London, and in New York. The forces that pushed the Roman Empire into its position of authority and led to the organization of Imperial Britain are to-day operating with accelerated pace in the United States. The sooner the American people, and particularly those who are directing public policy, wake up to this simple but essential fact, the sooner will doubt and misunderstanding be removed, the sooner will the issues be drawn and the nation's course be charted.

3. _The Logical Goal_

The logical goal of the American plutocracy is the economic and incidentally the political control of the world. The rulers of Macedon and Assyria, Rome and Carthage, of Britain and France labored for similar reasons to reach this same goal. It is economic fate. Kings and generals were its playthings, obeying and following the call of its destiny.

The rulers of antiquity were limited by a lack of transportation facilities; their "world" was small, including the basin of the Mediterranean and the land surrounding the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, nevertheless, they set out, one after another, to conquer it. To-day the rapid accumulation of surplus and the speed and ease of communication, the spread of world knowledge and the larger means of organization make it even more necessary than it was of old for the rulers of an empire to find a larger and ever larger place in the sun. The forces are more pressing than ever before. The times call more loudly for a genius with imagination, foresight and courage who will use the power at his disposal to write into political history the gains that have already been made a part of economic life. Let such a one arise in the United States, in the present chaos of public thought, and he could not only himself dictate American public policy for the remainder of his life, but in addition, he could, within a decade, have the whole territory from the Canadian border to the Panama Canal under the American Flag, either as conquered or subject territory; he could establish a Chinese wall around South American trade and opportunities by a very slight extension of the Monroe Doctrine; he could have in hand the problem of an economic if not a political union with Canada, and could be prepared to measure swords with the nearest economic rival, either on the high seas or in any portion of the world where it might prove necessary to join battle.

Such a program would be a departure from the traditions of American public life, but the traditions, built by a nation of farmers, have already lost their significance. They are historic, with no contemporary justification. The economic life that has grown up since 1870 of necessity will create new public policies.

The success of such a program would depend upon four things:

1. A coordination of American economic life.

2. A fast grip on the agencies for shaping public opinion.

3. A body of citizens, martial, confident, restless, ambitious.

4. A ruling class with sufficient imagination to paint, in warm sympathetic colors, the advantages of world dominion; and with sufficient courage to follow out imperial policy, regardless of ethical niceties, to its logical goal of world conquest.

All four of these requisites exist in the United States to-day, awaiting the master hand that shall unite them. Many of the leaders of American public life know this. Some shrink from the issue, because they are unaccustomed to dream great dreams, and are terrified by the immensity of large thoughts. Others lack the courage to face the new issues. Still others are steadily maneuvering themselves into a position where they may take advantage of a crisis to establish their authority and work their imperial will. The situation grows daily more inviting; the opportunity daily more alluring. The war-horse, saddled and bridled, is pawing the earth and neighing. How soon will the rider come?

4. _Eat or Be Eaten_

The American ruling class has been thrown into a position of authority under a system of international economic competition that calls for initiative and courage. Under this system, there are two possibilities,--eat or be eaten!

There is no middle ground, no half way measure. It is impossible to stop or to turn back. Like men engaged on a field of battle, the contestants in this international economic struggle must remain with their faces toward the enemy, fighting for every inch that they gain, and holding these gains with their bodies and their blood, or else they must turn their backs, throw away their weapons, run for their lives, and then, hiding on the neighboring hills, watch while the enemy despoils the camp, and then applies a torch to the ruins.

The events of the great war prove, beyond peradventure, that in the wolf struggle among the capitalist nations, no rules are respected and no quarter given. Again and again the leaders among the allied statesmen--particularly Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Wilson--appealed to the German people over the heads of their masters with assurances that the war was being fought against German autocracy, not against Germans. "When will the German people throw off their yoke?" asked one Allied diplomat. The answer came in November, 1918. A revolution was contrived, the Kaiser fled the country, the autocracy was overthrown. Germans ceased to fight with the understanding that Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points should be made the foundation of the Peace. The armistice terms violated the spirit if not the letter of the fourteen points; the Peace Treaty scattered them to the winds. Under its provisions Germany was stripped of her colonies; her investments in the allied possessions were confiscated; her ships were taken; three-quarters of her iron ore and a third of her coal supply were turned over to other powers; motor trucks, locomotives, and other essential parts of her economic mechanism were appropriated. Austria suffered an even worse fate, being "drawn and quartered" in the fullest sense of the term. After stripping the defeated enemies of all available booty, levying an indeterminate indemnity, and dismembering the German and Austrian Empires, the Allies established for thirty years a Reparation Commission, which is virtually the economic dictator of Europe. Thus for a generation to come, the economic life of the vanquished Empires will be under the active supervision and control of the victors. Never did a farmer's wife pluck a goose barer than the Allies plucked the Central Powers. (See the Treaty, also "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," J. M. Keynes. New York, Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920.)

Under the armistice terms and the Peace Treaty the Allies did to Germany and Austria exactly what Germany and Austria would have done to France and Great Britain had the war turned out differently. The Allied statesmen talked much about democracy, but when their turn came they plundered and despoiled with a practiced imperial hand. France and Britain, as well as Germany and Austria, were capitalist Empires. The Peace embodies the essential economic morality of capitalist imperialism, the morality of "Eat or be eaten."

5. _The Capitalists and War_

The people and even the masters of America are inexperienced in this international struggle. Among themselves they have experimented with competitive industrialism on a national scale. Now, brought face to face with the world struggle, many of them revolt against it. They deplore the necessities that lead nations to make war on one another. They supported the late war "to end war." They gave, suffered and sacrificed with a keen, idealistic desire to "make the world safe for democracy." They might as well have sought to scatter light and sunshine from a cloudbank.

The masters of Europe, who have learned their trade in long years of intrigue, diplomacy and war, feel no such repugnance. They play the game. The American people are of the same race-stocks as the leading contestants in the European struggle. They are not a whit less ingenious, not a whit less courageous, not a whit less determined. When practice has made them perfect they too will play the game just as well as their European cousins and their play will count for more because of the vast economic resources and surpluses which they possess.

American statesmen in the field of international diplomacy are like babies, taking their first few steps. Later the steps come easier and easier, until a child, who but a few months ago could not walk, has learned to romp and sport about. The masters of the United States are untrained in the arts of international intrigue. They showed their inferiority in the most painful way during the negotiations over the Paris Treaty. They are as yet unschooled in international trade, banking and finance. They are also inexperienced in war, yet, having only raw troops, and little or no equipment, within two years they made a notable showing on the battlefields of Europe. Now they are busy learning their financial lessons with an equal facility. A generation of contact with world politics will bring to the fore diplomats capable of meeting Europe's best on their own ground. What Europe has learned, America can learn; what Europe has practiced, America can practice, and in the end she may excel her teachers.

To-day economic forces are driving relentlessly. Surplus is accumulating in a geometric ratio--surplus piling on surplus. This surplus must be disposed of. While the remainder of the world--except Japan--is staggering under intolerable burdens of debt and disorganization, the United States emerges almost unscathed from the war, and prepares in dead earnest to enter the international struggle,--to play at the master game of "eat or be eaten."

Pride, ambition and love of gain and of power are pulling the American plutocrats forward. The world seems to be within their grasp. If they will reach out their hands they may possess it! They have assumed a great responsibility. As good Americans worthy of the tradition of their ancestors, they must see this thing through to the end! They must win, or die in the attempt; and it is in this spirit that they are going forward.

The American capitalists do not want war with Great Britain or with any other country. They are not seeking war. They will regret war when it comes.

War is expensive, troublesome and dangerous. The experiences of Europe in the War of 1914 have taught some lessons. The leaders and thinkers among the masters of America have visited Europe. They have seen the old institutions destroyed, the old customs uprooted, the old faiths overturned. They have seen the economic order in which they were vitally concerned hurled to the earth and shattered. They have seen the red flag of revolution wave where they had expected nothing but the banner of victory. They have seen whole populations, weary of the old order, throw it aside with an impatient gesture and bring a new order into being. They have good reasons to understand and fear the disturbing influences of war. They have felt them even in the United States--three thousand miles away from the European conflict. How much more pressing might this unrest be if the United States had fought all through the war, instead of coming in when it was practically at an end!

Then there is always the danger of losing the war--and such a loss would mean for the United States what it has meant for Germany--economic slavery.

Presented with an opportunity to choose between the hazards of war and the certainties of peace most of the capitalist interests in the United States would without question choose peace. There are exceptions. The manufacturers of munitions and of some of the implements and supplies that are needed only for war purposes, undoubtedly have more to gain through war than through peace, but they are only a small element in a capitalist world which has more to gain through peace than through war.

But the capitalists cannot choose. They are embedded in an economic system which has driven them--whether they liked it or not--along a path of imperialism. Once having entered upon this path, they are compelled to follow it into the sodden mire of international strife.

6. _The Imperial Task_

The American ruling class--the plutocracy--must plan to dominate the earth; to exploit it, to exact tribute from it. Rome did as much for the basin of the Mediterranean. Great Britain has done it for Africa and Australia, for half of Asia, for four million square miles in North America. If the people of one small island, poorly equipped with resources, can achieve such a result, what may not the people of the United States hope to accomplish?

That is the imperial task.

1. American economic life must be unified. Already much of this work has been done.

2. The agencies for shaping public opinion must be secured. Little has been left for accomplishment in this direction.

3. A martial, confident, restless, ambitious spirit must be generated among the people. Such a result is being achieved by the combination of economic and social forces that inhere in the present social system.

4. The ruling class must be schooled in the art of rulership. The next two generations will accomplish that result.

The American plutocracy must carry on. It must consolidate its gains and move forward to greater achievements, with the goal clearly in mind and the necessities of imperial power thoroughly mastered and understood.

XVII. THE NEW IMPERIAL ALIGNMENT

1. _A Survey of the Evidence_

Through the centuries empires have come and gone. In each age some nation or people has emerged--stronger, better organized, more aggressive, more powerful than its neighbors--and has conquered territory, subjugated populations, and through its ruling class has exploited the workers at home and abroad.

Europe has been for a thousand years the center of the imperial struggle,--the struggle which called into being the militarism so hated by the European peoples. It was from that struggle that millions fled to America, where they hoped for liberty and peace.

The eighteenth century witnessed the rise of Great Britain to a position of world authority. During the nineteenth century she held her place against all rivals. With the assistance of Prussia, she overthrew Napoleon at Waterloo. In the Crimean War and the Russo-Japanese War she halted the power of the Czar. Half a century after Waterloo Germany, under the leadership of Prussia won the Franco-Prussian War, and by that act became the leading rival of the British Empire. Following the war, which gave Germany control of the important resources included in Alsace and Lorraine, there was a steady increase in her industrial efficiency; the success of her trade was as pronounced as the success of her industries, and by 1913 the Germans had a merchant fleet and a navy second only to those of Great Britain.

Germany's economic successes, and her threat to build a railroad from Berlin to Bagdad and tap the riches of the East, led the British to form alliances with their traditional enemies--the French and the Russians. Russia, after the breakdown of Czarism in 1917, dropped out of the Entente, and the United States took her place among the Allies of the British Empire. During the struggle France was reduced to a mere shell of her former power. The War of 1914 bled her white, loaded her with debt, disorganized her industries, demoralized her finances, and although it restored to her important mineral resources, it left her too weak and broken to take real advantage of them.

The War of 1914 decided the right of Great Britain to rule the Near East as well as Southern Asia and the strategic points of Africa. In the stripping of the vanquished and in the division of the spoils of war the British lion proved to be the lion indeed. But the same forces that gave the British the run of the Old World called into existence a rival in the New.

People from Britain, Germany and the other countries of Northern Europe, speaking the English language and fired with the conquering spirit of the motherland, had been, for three centuries, taming the wilderness of North America. They had found the task immense, but the rewards equally great. When the forces of nature were once brought into subjection, and the wilderness was inventoried, it proved to contain exactly those stores that are needed for the success of modern civilization. With the Indians brushed aside, and the Southwest conquered from Mexico, the new ruling class of successful business men established itself, and the matter of safeguarding property rights, of building industrial empires and of laying up vast stores of capital and surplus followed as a matter of course.

Europe, busy with her own affairs, paid little heed to the New World, except to send to it some of her most rugged stock and much of her surplus wealth. The New World, left to itself, pursued its way--in isolation, and with an intensity proportioned to the size of the task in hand and the richness of the reward.

The Spanish War in 1898 and the performance of the Canadians in the Boer War of 1899 astounded the world, but it was the War of 1914 that really waked the Europeans to the possibilities of the Western peoples. The Canadians proved their worth to the British armies. The Americans showed that they could produce prodigious amounts of the necessaries of war, and when they did go in, they inaugurated a shipping program, raised and dispatched troops, furnished supplies and provided funds to an extent which, up to that time, was considered impossible. The years from 1914 to 1918 established the fact that there was, in the West, a colossus of economic power.

2. _The New International Line-Up_

There are four major factors in the new international line-up. The first is Russia; the second is the Japanese Empire; the third is the British Empire and the fourth is the American Empire. Italy has neither the resources, the wealth nor the population necessary to make her a factor of large importance in the near future. France is too weak economically, too overloaded with debt and too depleted in population to play a leading role in world affairs.

The Russian menace is immediate. Bolshevism is not only the antithesis of Capitalism but its mortal enemy. If Bolshevism persists and spreads through Central Europe, India and China, capitalism will be wiped from the earth.

A federation of Russia, the Baltic states, the new border provinces, and the Central Empires on a socialist basis would give the socialist states of central and northern Europe most of the European food area, a large portion of the European raw material area and all of the technical skill and machinery necessary to make a self-supporting economic unit. The two hundred and fifty millions of people in Russia and Germany combined in such a socialist federation would be as irresistible economically as they would be from a military point of view.

Such a Central European federation, developing as it must along the logical lines that lead into India and China would be the strongest single unit in the world, viewed from the standpoint of resources, of population, of productive power or of military strength. The only possible rivals to such a combination would be the widely scattered forces of the British Empire and the United States, separated from it by the stretches of the Atlantic Ocean. Against such a grouping Japan would be powerless because it would deprive her of the source of raw materials upon which she must rely for her economic development. Great Britain with her relatively small population and her rapidly diminishing resources could make no head against such a combination even with the assistance of her colonial empire. Northern India is as logical a home for Bolshevism as Central China or South-eastern Russia. Connect European Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Siberia, India and China with bonds that make effective cooperation possible and these countries--containing nearly two-thirds of the population of the world, and possessed of the resources necessary to maintain a modern civilization--could laugh at outside interference.

Two primary difficulties confront the organizers of the Federated Socialist Republics of Europe and Asia. One is nationality, language, custom and tradition, together with the ancient antagonisms which have been so carefully nurtured through the centuries. The other is the frightful economic disorganization prevalent throughout Central Europe,--a disorganization which would be increased rather than diminished by the establishment of new forms of economic life. Even if such an organization were perfected, it must remain, for a long time to come, on a defensive basis.

3. _The Yellow Peril_

The "yellow peril" thus far is little more than the Japanese menace to British and American trade in the Far East. The Japanese Archipelago is woefully deficient in coal, iron, petroleum, water power and agricultural land. The country is over-populated and must depend for its supplies of food and raw materials upon continental Asia. There seems to be no probability that Japan and China can make any effective working agreement in the near future that will constitute an active menace to the supremacy of the white race. Alone Japan is too weak in resources and too sparse in population. Combined with China she would be formidable, but her military policy in Korea and in the Shantung Province have made any effective cooperation with China at least temporarily impossible.

Furthermore, the Japanese are not seeking world conquest. On the contrary, they are bent upon maintaining their traditional aloofness by having a Monroe Doctrine for the East. This doctrine will be summed up in the phrase, "The East for the Easterners,"--the easterners being the Japanese. Such a policy would prove a serious menace to the trade of the United States and of Great Britain. It would prove still more of a hindrance to the investment of American and British capital in the very promising Eastern enterprises, and would close the door on the Western efforts to develop the immense industrial resources of China. The recent "Chinese Consortium," in which Japan joined with great reluctance, suggests that the major capitalist powers have refused to recognize the exclusive right of Japan to the economic advantages of the Far East. How seriously this situation will be taken by the United States and Great Britain depends in part upon the vigor with which Japan prosecutes her claims and in part upon the preoccupation of these two great powers with Bolshevism in Europe and with their own competitive activities in ship building, trade, finance and armament.

4. _The British and the American Empires_

The two remaining major forces in world economics and politics are the British Empire and the American Empire,--the mistress of the world, and her latest rival in the competition for world power. Between them, to-day, most of the world is divided. The British Empire includes the Near East, Southern Asia, Africa, Australia and half of North America. Dogging her are Germany, France, Russia and Italy, and, as she goes to the Far East,--Japan. The United States holds the Western Hemisphere, where she is supreme, with no enemy worthy the name.

The British power was shaken by the War of 1914. Never, in modern times, had the British themselves, been compelled to do so much of the actual fighting. The war debt and the disorganization of trade incident to the war period proved serious factors in the curtailment of British economic supremacy. At the same time, the territorial gains of the British were enormous, particularly in the Near East.

The Americans secured real advantages from the war. They grew immensely rich in profiteering during the first three years, they emerged with a relatively small debt, with no great loss of life, and with the greatest economic surpluses and the greatest immediate economic advantages possessed by any nation of the world.

The British Empire was the acknowledged mistress of the world in 1913. Her nearest rival (Germany) had one battleship to her two; one ton of merchant shipping to her three, and two dollars of foreign investments to her five. This rivalry was punished as the successive rivals of the British Empire have been punished for three hundred years.

The war was won by the British Empire and her Allies, but in the hour of victory a new rival appeared. By 1920 that rival had a naval program which promised a fleet larger than the British fleet in 1924 or 1925; within three years she had increased her merchant tonnage to two-thirds of the British tonnage, and her foreign investments were three times the foreign investments of Great Britain. This new rival was the American Empire--whose immense economic strength constituted an immediate threat to the world power of Great Britain.

5. _The Next Incident in the Great War_

Some nation, or some group of nations has always been in control of the known world or else in active competition for the right to exercise such a control. The present is an era of competition.

Capitalism has revolutionized the world's economic life. By 1875 the capitalist nations were in a mad race to determine which one should dominate the capitalist world and have first choice among the undeveloped portions of the earth. The competitors were Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia and Italy. Japan and the United States did not really enter the field for another generation.

The War of 1914 decided this much:--that France and Italy were too weak to play the big game in a big way, that Germany could not compete effectively for some time to come; that the Russians would no longer play the old game at all. There remained Japan, Great Britain and the United States and it is among these three nations that the capitalist world is now divided. Japan is in control of the Far East. Great Britain holds the Near East, Africa and Australia; the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere.

The Great War began in 1914. It will end when the question is decided as to which of these three empires will control the Earth.

Great Britain has been the dominant factor in the world for a century. She gained her position after a terrific struggle, and she has maintained it by vanquishing Holland, Spain, France and Germany.

The United States is out to capture the economic supremacy of the earth. Her business men say so frankly. Her politicians fear that their constituents are not as yet ready to take such a step. They have been reassured, however, by the presidential vote of November, 1920. American business life already is imperial, and political sentiment is moving rapidly in the same direction.

Great Britain holds title to the pickings of the world. America wants some or all of them. The two countries are headed straight for a conflict, which is as inevitable as morning sunrise, unless the menace of Bolshevism grows so strong, and remains so threatening that the great capitalist rivals will be compelled to join forces for the salvation of capitalist society.

As economic rivalries increase, competition in military and naval preparation will come as a matter of course. Following these will be the efforts to make political alliances--in the East and elsewhere.

These two countries are old time enemies. The roots of that enmity lie deep. Two wars, the white hot feeling during the Civil War, the anti-British propaganda, carried, within a few years, through the American schools, the traditions among the officers in the American navy, the presence of 1,352,251 Irish born persons in the United States (1910), the immense plunder seized by the British during the War of 1914,--these and many other factors will make it easy to whip the American people into a war-frenzy against the British Empire.

Were there no economic rivalries, such antagonisms might slumber for decades, but with the economic struggle so active, these other matters will be kept continually in the foreground.

The capitalists of Great Britain have faced dark days and have surmounted huge obstacles. They are not to be turned back by the threat of rivalry. The American capitalists are backed by the greatest available surpluses in the world; they are ambitious, full of enthusiasm and energy, they are flushed with their recent victory in the world war, and overwhelmed by the unexpected stores of wealth that have come to them as a result of the conflict. They are imbued with a boundless faith in the possibilities of their country. Neither Great Britain nor the United States is in a frame of mind to make concessions. Each is confident--the British with the traditional confidence of centuries of world leadership; the Americans with the buoyant, idealistic confidence of youth. It is one against the other until the future supremacy of the world is decided.

6. _The Imperial Task_

American business interests are engaged in the work of building an international business structure. American industry, directed from the United States, exploiting foreign resources for American profit, and financed by American institutions, is gaining a footing in Latin America, in Europe and Asia.

The business men of Rome built such a structure two thousand years ago. They competed with and finally crushed their rivals in Tyre, Corinth and Carthage. In the early days of the Empire, they were the economic masters, as well as the political masters of the known world.

Within two centuries the business men of Great Britain have built an international business structure that has known no equal since the days of the Caesars. Perhaps it is greater, even, than the economic empire of the Romans. At any rate, for a century that British empire of commerce and industry has gone unchallenged, save by Germany. Germany has been crushed. But there is an industrial empire rising in the West. It is new. Its strength is as yet undetermined. It is uncoordinated. A new era has dawned, however, and the business men of the United States have made up their minds to win the economic supremacy of the earth.

Already the war is on between Great Britain and the United States. The two countries are just as much at war to-day as Great Britain and Germany were at war during the twenty years that preceded 1914. The issues are essentially the same in both cases,--commercial and economic in character, and it is these economic and commercial issues that are the chief causes of modern military wars--that are in themselves economic wars which may at any moment be transferred to the military arena.

British capitalists are jealously guarding the privileges that they have collected through centuries of business and military conflict. The American capitalists are out to secure these privileges for themselves. On neither side would a military settlement of the issue be welcomed. On both sides it would be regarded as a painful necessity. War is an incident in imperialist policy. Yet the position of the imperialist as an international exploiter depends upon his ability to make war successfully. War is a part of the price that the imperialist must pay for his opportunity to exploit and control the earth.

After Sedan, it was Germany versus Great Britain for the control of Europe. After Versailles it is the United States versus Great Britain for the control of the capitalist earth. Both nations must spend the next few years in active preparation for the conflict.

The governments of Great Britain and the United States are to-day on terms of greatest intimacy. Soon an issue will arise--perhaps over Mexico, perhaps over Persia, perhaps over Ireland, perhaps over the extension of American control in the Caribbean. There is no difficulty of finding a pretext.

Then there will follow the time-honored method of arousing the people on either side to wrath against those across the border. Great Britain will point to the race-riots and negro-lynchings in America as a proof that the people of the United States are barbarians. British editors will cite the wanton taking of the Canal Zone as an indication of the willingness of American statesmen to go to any lengths in their effort to extend their dominion over the earth. The newspapers of the United States will play up the terrorism and suppression in Ireland and there are many Irishmen more than ready to lend a hand in such an enterprise; tyranny in India will come in for a generous share of comment; then there are the relations between Great Britain and the Turks, and above all, there are the evidences in the Paris Treaty of the way in which Great Britain is gradually absorbing the earth. Unless the power of labor is strong enough to turn the blow, or unless the capitalists decide that the safety of the capitalist world depends upon their getting together and dividing the plunder, the result is inevitable.

The United States is a world Empire in her own right. She dominates the Western Hemisphere. Young and inexperienced, she nevertheless possesses the economic advantages and political authority that give her a voice in all international controversies. Only twenty years have passed since the organizing genius of America turned its attention from exclusively domestic problems to the problems of financial imperialism that have been agitating Europe for a half a century. The Great War showed that American men make good soldiers, and it also showed that American wealth commands world power.

With the aid of Russia, France, Japan and the United States Great Britain crushed her most dangerous rival--Germany. The struggle which destroyed Germany's economic and military power erected in her stead a more menacing economic and military power--the United States. Untrained and inexperienced in world affairs, the master class of the United States has been placed suddenly in the title role. America over night has become a world empire and over night her rulers have been called upon to think and act like world emperors. Partly they succeeded, partly they bungled, but they learned much. Their appetites were whetted, their imaginations stirred by the vision of world authority. To-day they are talking and writing, to-morrow they will act--no longer as novices, but as masters of the ruling class in a nation which feels herself destined to rule the earth.

The imperial struggle is to continue. The Japanese Empire dominates the Far East; the British Empire dominates Southern Asia, the Near East, Africa and Australia; the American Empire dominates the Western Hemisphere. It is impossible for these three great empires to remain in rivalry and at peace. Economic struggle is a form of war, and the economic struggle between them is now in progress.

7. _Continuing the Imperial Struggle_

The War of 1914 was no war for democracy in spite of the fact that millions of the men who died in the trenches believed that they were fighting for freedom. Rather it was a war to make the world safe for the British Empire. Only in part was the war successful. The old world was made safe by the elimination of Britain's two dangerous rivals--Germany and Russia; but out of the conflict emerged a new rival--unexpectedly strong, well equipped and eager for the conflict.

The war did not destroy imperialism. It was fought between five great empires to determine which one should be supreme. In its result, it gave to Great Britain rather than to Germany the right to exploit the undeveloped portions of Asia and of Africa.

The Peace--under the form of "mandates"--makes the process of exploitation easier and more legal than it ever has been in the past. The guarantees of territorial integrity, under the League Covenant, do more than has ever been done heretofore to preserve for the imperial masters of the earth their imperial prerogatives.

New names are being used but it is the old struggle. Egypt and India helped to win the war, and by that very process, they fastened the shackles of servitude more firmly upon their own hands and feet. The imperialists of the world never had less intention than they have to-day of quitting the game of empire building. Quite the contrary--a wholly new group of empire builders has been quickened into life by the experiences of the past five years.

The present struggle for the possession of the oil fields of the world is typical of the economic conflicts that are involved in imperial struggles. For years the capitalists of the great investing nations have been fighting to control the oil fields of Mexico. They have hired brigands, bought governors, corrupted executives. The war settled the Mexican question in favor of the United States. Mexico, considered internationally, is to-day a province of the American Empire.

During the blackest days of the war, when Paris seemed doomed, the British divided their forces. One army was operating across the deserts of the Near East. For what purpose? When the Peace was signed, Great Britain held two vantage points--the oil fields of the Near East and the road from Berlin to Bagdad.

The late war was not a war to end war, nor was it a war for disarmament. German militarism is not destroyed; the appropriations for military and naval purposes, made by the great nations during the last two years, are greater than they have ever been in any peace years that are known to history.

The world is preparing for war to-day as actively as it was in the years preceding the War of 1914. The years from 1914 to 1918 were the opening episodes; the first engagements of the Great War.

There is no question, among those who have taken the trouble to inform themselves, but that the War of 1914 was fought for economic and commercial advantage. The same rivalries that preceded 1914 are more

## active in the world to-day than ever before. Hence the possibilities of

war are greater by exactly that amount. The imperial struggle is being continued and a part of the imperial struggle is war.

8. _Again!_

This monstrous thing called war will occur again! Not because any considerable number of people want it, not even because an active minority wills it, but because the present system of competitive capitalism makes war inevitable. Economic rivalries are the basis of modern wars and economic rivalries are the warp and woof of capitalism.

To-day the rivalries are economic--in the fields of commerce and industry and finance. To-morrow they will be military.

Already the nations have begun the competition in the building of tanks, battleships and airplanes. These instruments of destruction are built for use, and when the time comes, they will be used as they were between 1914 and 1918.

Again there will be the war propaganda--subtle at first, then more and more open. There will be stories of atrocities; threats of world conquest. "Preparedness" will be the cry.

Again there will be the talk of "My country, right or wrong"; "Stand behind the President"; "Fall in line"; "Go over the top!"

Again fear will stalk through the land, while hate and war lust are whipped into a frenzy.

Again there will be conscription, and the straightest and strongest of the young men will leave their homes and join the colors.

Again the most stalwart men of the nations will "dig themselves in" and slaughter one another for years on end.

Again the truth-tellers will be mobbed and jailed and lynched, while those who champion the cause of the workers will be served with injunctions if they refuse to sell out to the masters.

Again the profiteers will stop at home and reap their harvests out of the agony and the blood of the nation.

Again, when the killing is over, a few old men, sitting around a table, will carve the world--stripping the vanquished while they reward the victors.

Again the preparations will begin for the next war. The people will be fed on promises, phrases and lies. They will pay and they will die for the benefit of their masters, and thus the terrible tragedy of imperialism will continue to bathe the world in tears and in blood.

XVIII. THE CHALLENGE TO IMPERIALISM

1. _Revolutionary Protest_

Since the Franco-Prussian War the people of Europe have been waking up to the failure of imperialism. The period has been marked by a rapid growth of Socialism on the continent and of trade-unionism in Great Britain. Both movements are expressions of an increasing working-class solidarity; both voice the sentiments of internationalism that were sounded so loudly during the revolutionary period of the eighteenth century.

The rapid growth of the European labor movement worried the autocrats and imperialists. Bismarck suppressed it; the Russian police tortured it. Despite all of the efforts to check it or to crush it, the revolutionary movement in Europe gained force. The speeches and writings of the leaders were directed against the capitalist system, and the rank and file of the workers, rendered sharply class conscious by the traditions of class rule, responded to the appeal by organizing new forms of protest.

The first revolutionary wave of the twentieth century broke in Russia in 1905. The Russian Revolution of 1917 destroyed the old regime and replaced it first by a moderate or liberal and then by a radical communist control. Like all of the proletarian movements in Europe the Russian revolutionary movement was directed against "capitalism" and "imperialism" and despite the fact that there was no considerable development of the capitalist system in Russia, its imperial organization was so thoroughgoing, and the imperial attitude toward the working class had been so brutally revealed during the revolutionary demonstrations in 1905, that the people reacted with a true Slavic intensity against the despotism that they knew, which was that of an autocratic, feudal master-class.

The international doctrines of the new Russian regime were expressed in the phrase "no forcible annexations, no punitive indemnities, the free development of all peoples." The keynote of its internal policy is contained in Section 16 of the Russian Constitution, which makes work the duty of every citizen of the Republic and proclaims as the motto of the new government the doctrine, "He that will not work neither shall he eat." The franchise is restricted. Only workers (including housekeepers) are permitted to vote. Profiteers and exploiters are specifically denied the right to vote or to hold office. Resources are nationalized together with the financial and industrial machinery of Russia. The Bill of Rights contained in the first section of the Russian Constitution is a pronouncement in favor of the liberty of the workers from every form of exploitation and economic oppression.

The Russian revolution was directed against capitalism in Russia and against imperialism everywhere. This dramatic assault upon capitalist imperialism centered the eyes of the world upon Russia, making her experiment the outstanding feature of a period during which the workers were striving to realize the possibilities of a more abundant life for the masses of mankind.

2. _Outlawing Bolshevism_

Capitalist diplomats were wary of the Kerensky regime because they did not feel certain how far the Russian people intended to go. The triumph of the Bolsheviki made the issue unmistakably clear. There could be no peace between Bolshevism and capitalism. From that day forward it was a struggle to determine which of the two economic systems should survive.

During the years 1918 and 1919 the capitalist world organized one of the most effective advertising campaigns that has ever been staged. Every shred of evidence that, by any stretch of the imagination, could be distorted into an attack upon the Bolshevist regime, was scattered broadcast over the world. Where evidence was lacking, rumor and innuendo were employed. The leading newspapers and magazines, prominent statesmen, educators, clergymen, scientists and public men in every walk of life went out of their way to denounce the Russian experiment in very much the same manner that the propertied interests of Europe had denounced the French experiment during the years that followed 1789.

All of the great imperialist governments had at their disposal a vast machinery for the purveying of information--false or true as the case might demand. This public machinery like the machinery of private capitalism was turned against Bolshevism. The capitalist governments went farther by backing with money and supplies the counter revolutionary forces under Yudenich, Denekine, Seminoff, and Kolchak. Allied expeditions were landed on the soil of European and Asiatic Russia "to free the Russian people from the clutches of the Bolsheviki." A blockade was declared in which the Germans were invited to join (after the signing of the armistice), and the whole capitalist world united to starve into submission the men, women and children of revolutionary Russia.

No event of recent times, not even the holy war against the autocracy of militarist Germany, had created such a unanimity of action among the Western nations. Bolshevism threatened the very existence of capitalism and as such its destruction became the first task of the capitalist world.

The collapse of the capitalist efforts to destroy socialist Russia reflects the power of a new idea over the ancient form. The Allied expeditions into Russia met with hostility instead of welcome. The counter-revolutionary forces were overwhelmed by the red army. The buffer states made peace. The Allied soldiers mutinied when called upon to take part in a war against the forces of revolutionary Russia. "Holy Russia" became holy Russia indeed--recognized and respected by the proletarian forces throughout Europe.

3. _The New Europe_

Russia is the dramatic center of the European movement against capitalist imperialism, but the movement is not confined to Russia. Its

## activities are extended into every important country on the continent.

Since March, 1917, when the first revolution occurred in Russia, absolute monarchy and divine, kingly rights have practically disappeared from Europe. Before the Russian Revolution, four-fifths of the people of Europe were under the sway of monarchs who exercised dictatorial power over the domestic and foreign affairs of their respective nations. Within two years, the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs were driven from the thrones of Germany, of Austria and of Russia. Other rulers of lesser importance followed in their wake, until to-day, the old feudal power that held the political control over most of Europe in 1914 has practically disappeared.

This is the obvious thing--a revolution in the form of political government--the kind of revolution with which history usually deals.

But there is another revolution proceeding in Europe, far more important because more fundamental--the economic and social revolution; the change in the form of breadwinning; the change in the relation between a man and the tools that he uses to earn his livelihood.

Every one knows, now, that Czars and Kaisers and Emperors did not really control Europe before 1914, except in so far as they yielded to bankers and to business men. The crown and the scepter gave the appearance of power, but behind them were concessions, monopolies, economic preferments, and special privilege. The European revolution that began in 1917 with the Czar, did not stop with kings. It began with them because they were in such plain sight, but when it had finished with them it went right on to the bankers and the business men.

War is destruction, organized and directed by the best brains available. It is merry sport for the organizers and for some of the directors, but like any other destructive agent, it may get out of hand. The War of 1914 was to last for six weeks. It dragged on for five years, and the wars that have grown out of it are still continuing. In the course of those five years, the war destroyed the capitalist system of continental Europe. Patches and shreds of it remained, but they were like the topless, shattered trees on the scarred battle-fields. They were remnants--nothing more. In the first place, the war destroyed the confidence of the people in the capitalist system; in the second place, it smashed up the political machinery of capitalism; in the third place, it weakened or destroyed the economic machinery of capitalism.

Each government, to win the war, lied to its people. They were told that their country was invaded. They were assured that the war would be a short affair. Besides that, there were various reasons given for the struggle--it was a war to end war; it was a war to break the iron ring that was crushing a people; it was a war for liberty; it was a struggle to make the world safe for democracy.

Not a single important promise of the war was fulfilled, save only the promise of victory. Hundreds of millions, aroused to the heights of an exalted idealism, came back to earth only to find themselves betrayed. With less promise and more fulfillment; with at least an appearance of statesmanship; with some respect for the simple moralities of truth-telling, fair-dealing, and common honor, there might have been some chance for the capitalist system to retain the confidence of the peoples of war-torn Europe, even in the face of the Russian Revolution; but each of these things was lacking, and as one worker put it: "I don't know what Bolshevism is, but it couldn't be any worse than what we have now, so I'm for it!"

Such a loss of public confidence would have proved a serious blow to any social system, even were it capable of immediately reestablishing normal conditions of living among the people. In this case, the same events that destroyed public confidence in the capitalist system, destroyed the system itself.

The old political forms of Europe--the czars, emperors and kaisers, who stood as the visible symbols of established order and civilization, were overthrown during the war. The economic forces--the banks and business men--had used these forms for the promotion of their business enterprises. Capitalism depended on czars and kaisers as a blacksmith depends on his hammer. They were among the tools with which business forged the chains of its power. They were the political side of the capitalist system. While the people accepted them and believed in them, the business interests were able to use these political tools at will. The tools were destroyed in the fierce pressure of war and revolution, and with them went one of the chief assets of the European capitalists.

There was a third breakdown--far more important than the break in the political machinery of the capitalist system--and that was the annihilation of the old economic life.

Economic life is, in its elements, very simple. Raw materials--iron ore, copper, cotton, petroleum, coal and wheat--are converted, by some process of labor, into things that feed, clothe and house people. There are four stages in this process--raw materials; manufacturing; transportation; marketing. If there is a failure in one of the four, all of the rest go wrong, as is very clearly illustrated whenever there is a great miners' or railroad workers' strike, or when there is a failure of a particular crop. During the war, all four of these economic stages went wrong.

Between the years 1914 and 1918 the people of Europe busied themselves with a war that put their economic machine out of the running.

For a hundred years the European nations had been busy building a finely adjusted economic mechanism; population, finance, commerce--all were knit into the same system. This system the war demolished, and the years that have followed the Armistice have not seen it rebuilt in any essential particular, save in Great Britain and in some of the neutral countries.

Not only were the European nations unable to give commodities in exchange for the things they needed but the machinery of finance, by means of which these transactions were formerly facilitated, was crippled almost beyond repair. Under the old system buying and selling were carried on by the use of money, and money ceased to be a stable medium of exchange in Europe. It would be more correct to say that money was no longer taken seriously in many parts of Europe. During the war the European governments printed 75 billions of dollars' worth of paper money. This paper depreciated to a ridiculous extent. Before the war, the franc, the lira, the mark and the crown had about the same value--20 to 23 cents, or about five to a dollar. By 1920 the dollar bought 15 francs; 23 liras; 40 marks, and 250 Austrian crowns. In some of the ready-made countries, constituted under the Treaty or set up by the Allies as a cordon about Russia, hundreds and thousands of crowns could be had for a dollar. Even the pound sterling, which kept its value better than the money of any of the other European combatants, was thirty per cent. below par, when measured in terms of dollars. This situation made it impossible for the nations whose money was at such a heavy discount to purchase supplies from the more fortunate countries. But to make matters even worse, the rate of exchange fluctuated from day to day and from hour to hour so that business transactions could only be negotiated on an immense margin of safety.

Add to this financial dissolution the mountains of debt, the huge interest charges and the oppressive taxes, and the picture of economic ruin is complete.

The old capitalist world, organized on the theory of competition between the business men within each nation, and between the business men of one nation and those of another nation, reached a point where it would no longer work.

In Russia the old system had disappeared, and a new system had been set up in its place. In Germany, and throughout central Europe, the old system was shattered, and the new had not yet emerged. In France, Italy and Great Britain the old system was in process of disintegration--rapid in France and Italy; slower in Great Britain. But in all of these countries intelligent men and women were asking the only question that statesmanship could ask--the question, "What next?"

The capitalist system was stronger in Great Britain than in any of the other warring countries of Europe. Before the war, it rested on a surer foundation. During the war, it withstood better than any other the financial and industrial demands. Since the war, it has made the best recovery.

Great Britain is the most successful of the capitalist states. The other capitalist nations of Europe regard her as the inner citadel of European capitalism. The British Labor Movement is seeking to take this citadel from within.

The British Labor Movement is a formidable affair. There are not more than a hundred thousand members in all of the Socialist parties, in the Independent Labor Party and in the Communist Party combined. There are between six and seven millions of members in the trade unions.

Perhaps the best test of the strength of the British Labor Movement came in the summer of 1920, over the prospective war with Russia. Warsaw was threatened. Its fall seemed imminent, and both Millerand and Lloyd-George made it clear that the fall of Warsaw meant war. The situation developed with extraordinary rapidity. It was reported that the British Government had dispatched an ultimatum. The Labor Movement acted with a strength and precision that swept the Government off its feet and compelled an immediate reversal of policy.

Over night, the workers of Great Britain were united in the Council of

## Action. As originally constituted, the "Labor and Russia Council of

## Action" consisted of five representatives each from the Parliamentary

Committee of the Trades Union Congress, the Executive Committee of the Labor Party and the Parliamentary Labor Party. To these fifteen were added eight others, among whom were representatives of every element in the British Labor Movement. This Council of Action did three things--it notified the Government that there must be no war with Russia; it organized meetings and demonstrations in every corner of the United Kingdom to formulate public opinion; it began the organization of local councils of action, of which there were three hundred within four weeks. The Council of Action also called a special conference of the British Labor Movement which met in London on August 13. There were over a thousand delegates at this conference, which opened and closed with the singing of the "Internationale." When the principal resolution of endorsement was passed, approving the formation of the Council of

## Action, the delegates rose to their feet, cheered the move to the echo,

and sang the "Internationale" and "The Red Flag." The closing resolution authorized the Council of Action to take "any steps that may be necessary to give effect to the decisions of the Conference and the declared policy of the Trade Union and Labor Movement."

Such was the position in the "Citadel of European Capitalism." The Government was forced to deal with a body that, for all practical purposes, was determining the foreign policy of the Empire. Behind that Council was an organized group of between six and seven millions of workers who were out to get the control of industry into their own hands, and to do it as speedily and as effectually as circumstances would permit.

Meanwhile, the mantle of revolutionary activity descended upon Italy, where the red flag was run up over some the largest factories and some of the finest estates.

Throughout the war, the revolutionary movement was strong in Italy. The Socialist Party remained consistently an anti-war party, with a radical and vigorous propaganda. The Armistice found the Socialist and Labor Movements strong in the North, with a growing movement in the South for the organization of Agricultural Leagues.

The Socialist propaganda in Italy was very consistent and telling. The paper "Avanti," circulating in all parts of the country, was an agency of immense importance. The war, the Treaty, the rising cost of living, the growing taxation--all had prepared the ground for the work that the propagandists were doing. Their message was: "Make ready for the taking over of the industries! Learn what you can, so that, when the day comes, each will play his part. When you get the word, take over the works! There must be no violence--that only helps the other side. Do not linger on the streets, you will be shot. Remain at home or stay in the factories and work as you never worked before!"

That, in essence, was the Italian Socialist propaganda--simple, clear and direct, and that was, in effect, what the workers did.

The returned soldiers were a factor of large importance in the Italian Revolution. They were radicals throughout the war. The peace made them revolutionists. "The Proletarian League of the Great War" was affiliated with "The International of Former Soldiers," which comprised the radical elements among the ex-service men of Great Britain, Germany, France, Austria, Italy and a number of the smaller countries. There were over a million dues-paying members in this International, and their avowed object was propaganda against war and in favor of an economic system in which the workers control the industries. It was this group in Italy--particularly in the South--that carried through the project of occupying the estates.

The workers are in control of the whole social fabric in Russia where the revolution has gone the farthest. In Great Britain, where the labor movement is perhaps more conservative than in any of the other countries of Europe, the Government is compelled to deal with a labor movement that is strong enough to consider and to decide important matters of foreign policy. The workers of Italy have the upper hand. In Czecho-Slovakia, in Bulgaria, in Germany and in the smaller and neutral countries the workers are making their voices heard in opposition to any restoration of the capitalist system; while they busy themselves with the task of creating the framework of a new society.

4. _The Challenge_

This is the challenge of the workers of Europe to the capitalist system. The workers are not satisfied; they are questioning. They mean to have the best that life has to give, and they are convinced that the capitalist system has denied it to them.

The world has had more than a century of capitalism. The workers have had ample opportunity to see the system at work. The people of all the great capitalist countries--the common people--have borne the burdens and felt the crushing weight of capitalism--in its enslavement of little children; in its underpaying of women; in long hours of unremitting, monotonous toil; in the dreadful housing; in the starvation wages; in unemployment; in misery. The capitalist system has had a trial and it is upon the workers that the system has been tried out.

During this experiment, the workers of the world have been compelled to accept poverty, unemployment and war.

These terrible scourges have afflicted the capitalist world, and it is the workers and their families that have borne them in their own persons. In those countries where the capitalist system is the oldest, the workers have suffered the longest. The essence of capitalism is the exploitation of one man by another man, and the longer this exploitation is practiced the more skillful and effective does the master class become in its manipulation.

The workers look before them along the path of capitalist imperialism that is now being followed by the nations that are in the lead of the capitalist world. There they see no promise save the same exploitation, the same poverty, the same inequality and the same wars over the commercial rivalries of the imperial nations.

The workers of Europe have come to the conclusion that the world should belong to those who build it; that the good things of life should be the property of those who produce them. They see only one course open before them--to declare that those who will not work, shall not eat.

The right of self-determination is the international expression of this challenge. The ownership of the job is its industrial equivalent. Together, the two ideas comprise the program of the more advanced workers in all of the great imperial countries of the world. These ideas did not originate in Russia, and they are not confined to Russia any more than capitalism is confined to Great Britain. They are the doctrines of the new order that is coming rapidly into its own.

Capitalism has been summed up, heretofore, in the one word "profit." The capitalist cannot abandon that standard. The world has lived beyond it, however, and without it, capitalism, as a system, is meaningless. If the capitalists abandon profit, they abandon capitalism.

Without profit the capitalist system falls to pieces, because it is the profit incentive that has always been considered as the binder that holds the capitalist world together. Hence the abandonment of the profit incentive is the surrender of the citadel of capitalism. While profit remains, exploitation persists, and while there is exploitation of one man by another, no human being can call himself free.

The capitalists are caught in a beleaguered fortress in which they are defending their economic lives. Profit is the key to this fortress, and if they surrender the key, they are lost.

5. _The Real Struggle_

This is the real struggle for the possession of the earth. Shall the few own and the many labor for the few, or the many own, and labor upon jobs that they themselves possess? The struggle between the capitalist nations is incidental. The struggle between the owners of the world and the workers of the world is fundamental.

If Great Britain wins in her conflict with the United States, her capitalists will continue to exploit the workers of Lancashire and Delhi. Her imperialists will continue their policy of world domination, subjugating peoples and utilizing their resources and their labor for the enrichment.

If the United States wins in her struggle with Great of the bankers and traders of London. Britain, her capitalists will continue to exploit the workers of Pittsburg and San Juan. Her imperialists will continue their policy of world domination, subjugating the peoples of Latin American first, and then reaching out for the control over other parts of the earth.

No matter what imperial nation may triumph in this struggle between the great nations for the right to exploit the weaker peoples and the choice resources, the struggle between capitalism and Socialism must be fought to a finish. If the capitalists win, the world will see the introduction of a new form of serfdom, more complete and more effective than the serfdom of Feudal Europe. If the Socialists win, the world enters upon a new cycle of development.

XIX. THE AMERICAN WORKER AND WORLD EMPIRE

1. _Gains and Losses_

The American worker is a citizen of the richest country of the world. Resources are abundant. There is ample machinery to convert these gifts of nature into the things that men need for their food and clothing, their shelter, their education and their recreation. There is enough for all, and to spare, in the United States.

But the American worker is not master of his own destinies. He must go to the owners of American capital--to the plutocrats--and from them he must secure the permission to earn a living; he must get a job. Therefore it is the capitalists and not the workers of the United States that are deciding its public policy at the present moment.

The American capitalist is a member of one of the most powerful exploiting groups in the world. Behind him are the resources, productive machinery and surplus of the American Empire. Before him are the undeveloped resources of the backward countries. He has gained wealth and power by exploitation at home. He is destined to grow still richer and more powerful as he extends his organization for the purposes of exploitation abroad.

The prospects of world empire are as alluring to the American capitalist as have been similar prospects to other exploiting classes throughout history. Empire has always been meat and drink to the rulers.

The master class has much to gain through imperialism. The workers have even more to lose.

The workers make up the great bulk of the American people. Fully seven-eighths (perhaps nine-tenths) of the adult inhabitants of the United States are wage earners, clerks and working farmers. All of the proprietors, officials, managers, directors, merchants (big and little), lawyers, doctors, preachers, teachers, and the remainder of the business and professional classes constitute not over 10 or 12 percent of the total adult population. The workers are the "plain people" who do not build empires any more than they make wars. If they were left to themselves, they would continue the pursuit of their daily affairs which takes most of their thought and energy--and be content to let their neighbors alone.

2. _The Workers' Business_

The mere fact that the workers are so busy with the routine of daily life is in itself a guarantee that they will mind their own business. The average worker is engaged, outside of working hours, with the duties of a family. His wife, if she has children, is thus employed for the greater portion of her time. Both are far too preoccupied to interfere with the like acts of other workers in some other portion of the world. Furthermore, their preoccupation with these necessary tasks gives them sympathy with those similarly at work elsewhere.

The plain people of any country are ready to exercise even more than an ordinary amount of forbearance and patience rather than to be involved in warfare, which wipes out in a fortnight the advantages gained through years of patient industry.

The workers have no more to gain from empire building than they have from war making, but they pay the price of both. Empire building and war making are Siamese twins. They are so intimately bound together that they cannot live apart. The empire builder--engaged in conquering and appropriating territory and in subjugating peoples--must have not only the force necessary to set up the empire, but also the force requisite to maintain it. Battleships and army corps are as essential to empires as mortar is to a brick wall. They are the expression of the organized might by which the empire is held together.

The plain people are the bricks which the imperial class uses to build into a wall about the empire. They are the mortar also, for they man the ships and fill up the gaps in the infantry ranks and the losses in the machine gun corps. They are the body of the empire as the rulers are its guiding spirit.

When ships are required to carry the surplus wealth of the ruling class into foreign markets, the workers build them. When surplus is needed to be utilized in taking advantage of some particularly attractive investment opportunity the workers create it. They lay down the keels of the fighting ships, and their sons aim and fire the guns. They are drafted into the army in time of war and their bodies are fed to the cannon which other workers in other countries, or perhaps in the same country, have made for just such purposes. The workers are the warp and woof of empire, yet they are not the gainers by it. Quite the contrary, they are merely the means by which their masters extend their dominion over other workers who have not yet been scientifically exploited.

The work of empire building falls to the lot of the workers. The profits of empire building go to the exploiting class.

3. _The British Workers_

What advantage came to the workers of Rome from the Empire which their hands shaped and which their blood cemented together? Their masters took their farms, converted the small fields into great, slave-worked estates, and drove the husbandmen into the alleys and tenements of the city where they might eke out an existence as best they could. The rank-and-file Roman derived the same advantage from the Roman Empire that the rank-and-file Briton has derived from the British Empire.

Great Britain has exercised more world mastery during the past hundred years than any other nation. All that Germany hoped to achieve Great Britain has realized. Her traders carry the world's commerce, her financiers clip profits from international business transactions, her manufacturers sell to the people of every country, the sun never sets on the British flag.

Great Britain is the foremost exponent and practitioner of capitalist imperialism. The British Empire is the greatest that the world has known since the Empire of Rome fell to pieces. Whatever benefits modern imperialism brings either for capitalists or for workers should be enjoyed by the capitalists and workers of Great Britain.

Until the Great World War the capitalists of Great Britain were the most powerful on earth with a larger foreign trade and a larger foreign investment than any other. At the same time the British workers were amongst the worst exploited of those in any capitalist country in Europe.

The entire nineteenth century is one long and terrible record of master-class exploitation inside the British Isles. The miseries of modern India have been paralleled in the lives of the workers of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. Gibbins, in his description of the conditions of the child workers in the early years of the nineteenth century ends with the remark, "One dares not trust oneself to try and set down calmly all that might be told of this awful page of the history of industrial England."[58]

Even more revolting are the descriptions of the conditions which surrounded the lives of the mine workers in the early part of the nineteenth century. Women as well as men were taken into the mines and in some cases, as the reports of the Parliamentary investigation show, the women dragged cars through passage-ways that were too low to admit the use of ponies or mules.

England, mistress of the seas, proud carrier of the traffic of the world, the center of international finance, the richest among all the investing nations--England was reeking with poverty. Beside her factories and warehouses were vile slums in which people huddled as Ruskin said, "so many brace to a garret." There in the back alleys of civilization babies were born and babies died, while those who survived grew to the impotent manhood of the street hooligan.

The British Empire girdled the world. For a century its power had grown, practically unchallenged. Superficially it had every appearance of strength and permanence but behind it and beneath it were the hundreds of thousands of exploited factory workers, the underpaid miners, the Cannon Gate of Edinburgh and the Waterloo Junction of London.

Capitalist imperialism has not benefited the British workers. Quite the contrary, the rise of the Empire has been accompanied by the disappearance of the stalwart English yeoman; by the disappearance of the agricultural population; by the concentration of the people in huge industrial towns where the workers, no longer the masters of their own destinies, must earn their living by working at machines owned by the capitalist imperialists. The surplus derived from this exploited labor is utilized by the capitalists as the means of further extending their power in foreign lands.

Imperialism has brought not prosperity, but poverty to the plain people of England.

There is another aspect of the matter. If these degraded conditions attach to the workers in the center of the empire, what must be the situation among the workers in the dependencies that are the objects of imperial exploitation? Let the workers of India answer for Great Britain; the workers of Korea answer for Japan, and the workers of Porto Rico answer for the United States. Their lot is worse than is the lot of the workers at the center of imperial power.

Empires yield profits to the masters and victory and glory to the workers. Let any one who does not believe this compare the lives of the workers in small countries like Holland, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland, with the lives of the workers in the neighboring empires--Russia, Germany, France and Great Britain. The advantage is all on the side of those who live in the smaller countries that are minding their own affairs and letting their neighbors alone.

4. _The Long Trail_

The workers of the United States are to-day following the lead of the most powerful group of financial imperialists in the world. The trail is a long one leading to world conquest, unimagined dizzying heights of world power, riches beyond the ken of the present generation, and then, the slow and terrible decay and dissolution that sooner or later overtake those peoples that follow the paths of empire. The rulers will wield the power and enjoy the riches. The people will struggle and suffer and pay the price.

The American plutocracy is out to conquer the earth because it is to their interest to do so. The will-o'-the-wisp of world empire has captured their imaginations and they are following it blindly.

The American people, on November 2, 1920, gave the American imperialists a blanket authority to go about their imperial business--an authority that the rulers will not be slow to follow. First they will clean house at home--that housecleaning will be called "the campaign for the establishment of the open shop." Then they will go into Mexico, Central America, China, and Europe in search of markets, trade and investment opportunities.

Behind the investment will come the flag, carried by battle-ships and army divisions. That flag will be brought front to front with other flags, high words will be spoken, blood will flow, life will ebb, and the imperialists will win their point and pocket their profit.

Behind them, in November, and at all other times of the year, there will be the will, expressed or implied, of the working people of the United States, who will produce the surplus for foreign investment; will make the ships and man them; will dig the coal and bore for the oil; will shape the machines. Their hands and the hands of their sons will be the force upon which the ruling class must depend for its power. They will produce, while the ruling class consumes and destroys.

The trail is a long one, but it leads none the less certainly to, isolation and death. No people can follow the imperial trail and live. Their liberties go first and then their lives pay the penalty of their rulers' imperial ambition. It was so in the German Empire. It is so to-day in the British Empire. To-morrow, if the present course is followed, it will be equally true in the American Empire.

5. _The New Germany_

One of the chief charges against the Germans, in 1914, was that they were not willing to leave their neighbors in peace. They were out to conquer the world, and they did not care who knew it. It was not the German people who held these plans for world conquest, it was the German ruling class. The German people were quite willing to stay at home and attend to their own affairs. Their rulers, pushed by the need for markets and investment opportunities, and lured by the possibilities of a world empire, were willing to stake the lives and the happiness of the whole nation on the outcome of these ambitious schemes. They threw their dice in the great world game of international rivalries--threw and lost; but in their losing, they carried not only their own fortunes, but the lives and the homes and the happiness of millions of their fellows whose only desire was to remain at home and at peace.

Germany's offense was her ambition to gain at the expense of her neighbors. Lacking a place in the sun, she proposed to take it by the strength of her good right arm. This is the method by which all of the great empires have been built and it is the method that the builders of the American Empire have followed up to this point. The land which the ruling class of the United States has needed has heretofore been in the hands of weak peoples--Indians, Mexicans, a broken Spanish Empire. Now, however, the time has come when the rulers of the United States, with the greatest wealth and the greatest available resources of any of the nations, are preparing to take what they want from the great nations, and that imperial purpose can be enforced in only one way--by a resort to arms. The rulers of the United States must take what they would have by force, from those who now possess it. They did not hesitate to take Panama from Colombia; they did not hesitate to take possession of Hayti and of Santo Domingo, and they do not propose to stop there.

The people of the world know these things. The inhabitants of Latin America know them by bitter experience. The inhabitants of Europe and of Asia know them by hearsay. Both in the West and in the East, the United States is known as "The New Germany."

That means that the peoples of these countries look upon the United States and her foreign policies in exactly the same way that the people of the United States were taught to regard Germany and her foreign policies. To them the United States is a great, rich, brutal Empire, setting her heel and laying her fist where necessity calls. Men and women inside the United States think of themselves and of their fellow citizens as human beings. The people in the other countries read the records of the lynchings, the robberies and the murders inside the United States; of the imperial aggression toward Latin America, and they are learning to believe that the United States is made up of ruthless conquerors who work their will on those that cross their path.

The plain American men and women, living quietly in their simple homes, are none the less citizens of an aggressive, conquering Empire. They may not have a thought directed against the well-being of a single human creature, but they pay their taxes into the public treasury; they vote for imperialism on each election day; they read imperialism in their papers and hear it preached in their churches, and when the call comes, their sons will go to the front and shed their blood in the interest of the imperial class.

The plain people of the German Empire did not desire to harm their fellows, nevertheless, they furnished the cannon-fodder for the Great War. America's plain folks, by merely following the doctrine, "My country, right or wrong--America first!" will find themselves, at no very distant date, exactly where the German people found themselves in 1914.

6. _The Price_

The historic record, in the matter of empire, is uniform. The masters gain; the workers pay.

The workers of the United States will not be exempt from these inexorable necessities of imperialism. On the contrary they will be called upon to pay the same price for empire that the workers in Britain have paid; that the workers in the other empires have paid. What is the price? What will world empire cost the American workers?

1. It will cost them their liberties. An empire cannot be run by a debating society. Empires must act. In order to make this action mobile and efficacious, authority must be centered in the hands of a small group--the ruling class, whose will shall determine imperial policy. Self-government is inconsistent with imperialism.

2. The workers will not only lose their own liberties, but they will be compelled to take liberties away from the peoples that are brought under the domination of the Empire. Self-determination is the direct opposite of imperialism.

3. The American workers, as a part of the price of empire, will be compelled to produce surplus wealth--wealth which they can never consume; wealth the control of which passes into the hands of the imperial ruling class, to be invested by them in the organization of the Empire and the exploitation of the resources and other economic opportunities of the dependent territory.

4. The American workers must be prepared to create and maintain an imperial class, whose function it is to determine the policies and direct the activities of the Empire. This class owes its existence to the existence of empire, without which such a ruling class would be wholly unnecessary.

5. The American workers must be prepared, in peace time as well as in war time, to provide the "sinews of war": the fortifications, the battle fleet, the standing army and the vast naval and military equipment that invariably accompany empire.

6. The American workers must furthermore be ready, at a moment's call, to turn from their occupations, drop their useful pursuits, accept service in the army or in the navy and fight for the preservation of the Empire--against those who attack from without, against those who seek the right of self-determination within.

7. The American workers, in return for these sacrifices, must be prepared to accept the poverty of a subsistence wage; to give the best of their energies in war and in peace, and to stand aside while the imperial class enjoys the fat of the land.

7. _A Way Out_

If the United States follows the course of empire, the workers of the United States have no choice but to pay the price of Empire--pay it in wealth, in misery, and in blood. But there is an alternative. Instead of going on with the old system of the masters, the workers may establish a new economic system--a system belonging to the workers, and managed by them for their benefit.

The workers of Europe have tried out imperialism and they have come to the conclusion that the cost is too high. Now they are seeking, through their own movement--the labor movement--to control and direct the economic life of Europe in the interest of those who produce the wealth and thus make the economic life of Europe possible.

The American workers have the same opportunity. Will they avail themselves of it? The choice is in their hands.

Thus far the workers of the United States have been, for the most part, content to live under the old system, so long as it paid them a living wage and offered them a job. The European workers felt that too in the pre-war days, but they have been compelled--by the terrible experiences of the past few years--to change their minds. It was no longer a question of wages or a job in Europe. It was a question of life or death.

Can the American worker profit by that experience? Can he realize that he is living in a country whose rulers have adopted an imperial policy that threatens the peace of the world? Can he see that the pursuit of this policy means war, famine, disease, misery and death to millions in other countries as well as to the millions at home? The workers of Europe have learned the lesson by bitter experience. Is not the American worker wise enough to profit by their example?

FOOTNOTE:

[58] "Industry in England," H. deB. Gibbins. New York, Scribner's, 1897, p. 390.

THE END

INDEX.

Advertising imperialism, 169

America, conquest of, 27

America first, 170

America for Americans, 202

American capitalists, 218 " " program of, 226 " empire, costs of, 160 " " course of, 158 " " development of, 15 " " economic basis of, 74 " " growth of, 161 " imperialism, 23 " Indian, 29 " industries, growth of, 178 " people, ancestry, 159 " protectorates, 207 " Republic, disappearance of, 72 " tradition, failure of, 12 " worker and empire, 256

Anti-imperialism, 68

Appropriation of territory, 213

Automobile distribution, 183

Bankers, unity of, 150

Bethlehem Steel Co., 132

British Empire, gains of, 198 " " position of, 234 " Labor, position of, 250

Business control, 148

Canada, investments in, 206

Capitalism and Bolshevism, 244 " " war, 225 " breakdown of, 248 " law of, 223

Cherokees, dealings with, 33

Class government, 10 " struggle, in Europe, 254

Coal reserves, 180

Cohesion of wealth, 86, 118

Competition, ferocity of, 223

Competitive industry, 75

Conquering peoples, 26

Conquest of the West, 49

Council of Action, organization, 250 " " National Defense, 148

Cuban independence, 66 " treaty, 208

Dictatorship, possibility of, 222

Dominican Republic, relations with, 209

Education for imperialism, 169

Empire and British workers, 258 " characteristics of, 15 " definition of, 16 " evolution of, 22 " prevalence of, 17 " price of, 20, 264 " stages in, 19 " workers and, 262

Empires, the Big Four, 231

Europe, financial breakdown, 249 " revolution in, 246

Financial imperialism, 135

Foreign investments, 131

France, gains of, 197

Government and business, 99

Great Peace, 36

Great War, 143 " " advantages of, to the United States, 157 " " next incidents of, 235 " " results of, 240

Guaranty Trust Company, 136

Hawaii, annexation of, 62 " revolution in, 63

Hayti, conditions in, 210

Immigrants, race of, 160

Imperial alignment, 229 " goal, 222 " purpose, 165 " sentiments, 166 " task, 237 " " nature of, 228

Imperialism, advantages of, 256 " beginnings of, 65 " challenge to, 243 " cost of, 261 " establishment of, 72 " failure of, 243 " psychology of, 170

Imperialists, training of, 219

Incomes, in the United States, 115

Industrial combination, 81 " organization, 78 " revolution, 76

International exploitation, 128 " finance, 135 " Harvester Co., 133

Investing nations, 127

Investment bankers, 86

Investments in the United States, 130

Italy, gains of, 197

Job ownership, 94

Labor, colonial shortage of, 38

Landlordism, 105

Land ownership, 103 " policy, 104

Latin America, 203

Liberty, desire for, 8

Manifest destiny, 171

Mastery, avenues of, 92

Mexican War, provocation of, 55 " " success of, 56

Mexico, conquest of, 54

Monroe Doctrine, 202 " " logic of, 207

National City Bank, 138

Navy League, 146

Negro civilization, in Africa, 40 " slaves, values of, 47

Negroes, numbers enslaved, 43

New Europe, 246

Next War, contestants in, 236 " " preparations for, 241 " " pretexts for, 238

New Orleans, struggle for, 50

Ownership, advantages of, 114

Panama, relations with, 213 " revolution in, 215 " seizure of, 214

Patriotism, 147

Peace Treaty, provisions of, 224 " " results of, 194

Personal incomes, sources of, 116

Philippines, conquest of, 69

Plutocracy, 117 " control of, 148 " dictatorship of, 92 " domestic power of, 153 " economic gains of, 151 " growing power of, 143

Popular government, 9

Population, increase of, 50

Preparedness, 145

Press censorship, 210

Product ownership, 96

Profiteering, 151

Property, Indian ideas of, 30 " ownership, security of, 107 " rights, and civilization, 113 " rights of, 103 " safeguards to, 108

Public opinion, control of, 98

Resources of the United States, 179

Revolution in Europe, 246

Russia, Allied attack on, 245 " world position of, 231

Slave Coast, 39 " power, defeat of, 61 " trade, America's part in, 44 " " beginnings of, 39 " " conditions of, 43 " " development of, 42

Slavery, and expansion, 60 " beginnings of, 39 " in the United States, 45

Slaves, early demand for, 41

Southwest, conquest of, 51, 57

Sovereignty, source of, 11

Spanish War, 65

Standard Oil Co., 134

Surplus, disposal of, 123 " pressure of, 121

Teutonic peoples, 26

Texas, annexation of, 52

Timber reserves, 180

Transportation facilities, 183

Undeveloped countries, 124

United States, capital of, 181 " " financial power of, 154 " " past isolation, 192 " " position of, 221 " " products of, 184 " " resources of, 179 " " shipping, 188 " " wealth and income, 189 " " world attitude to, 263 " " world power of, 177

Wealth and income, 189 " of the United States, 89 " ownership, 90

Western Hemisphere, and the United States, 200

World conquest, 218

Workers' business, 257

Yellow peril, 232