Chapter IX: Part V: The Challenge to Imperialism (8)

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_