American World Policies Part 9

THE APPEAL OF IMPERIALISM

It is a significant fact that despite a democratic opposition to imperialism it is precisely the democratic nations, England and France, which are most imperialistic. The British public seems always willing to make sacrifices to extend the Empire, and an almost equal enthusiasm is found among great sections of the French democracy. Also in Germany, when an election was fought in 1907 upon a colonial issue, thousands who usually voted the Socialist ticket gave their adhesion to the imperialists.

Such a popular adhesion is essential to the success of an imperialistic policy. The ma.s.ses need not be consulted upon the first steps but they are urgently called into conference when trouble begins and "pacification" or war is necessary. Your financier, with all his money, is helpless against the rival ambitions of a great nation, and, he must have the support of his own country, its navy, army, credit, and millions of patriotic citizens. How is he to secure this support?

To understand the implications of this question we must consider the changes in modern warfare and the rise of democracy in the Western World. The mercenary soldiers once employed by absolutist princes would go anywhere at any time and no questions asked. War was a game played by small teams of professionals. To-day it is a national conflict in which entire populations, old and young, male and female, are pitted against each other. This fact gives {141} to the peoples a pa.s.sive quasi-veto upon war, for success in a crucial conflict depends upon enthusiasm and supreme unity. To-day Germany would crumple if her people were actively hostile or even merely listless towards the war.

It would be difficult to raise loans, to sequester goods, to ensure the continuance of the industries upon which the nation and army live.

Victory depends upon the morale of the entire population. During the war itself, it is true, a nation tends to lose its power of self-criticism and to fight blindly. It defends proposals that in peace would be indefencible; it works itself up to a pitch of righteous self-justification. But war to-day is won before the first shot is fired; it is won by preparation. An army must be raised, a reserve of officers created, munitions stocked, strategic railways built, and plans elaborated for rapid military mobilisation and for a war organisation of industry. All this costs money--hundreds of millions.

If then the nation is to be taxed for military budgets, and if the people as a whole secure an increasing veto over such expenditures, would it not seem likely that the nations would look askance at dangerous imperialistic ventures which contributed so obviously to the danger of war and to the size of military expenditures. Would not the people say to the financiers, "Keep your capital at home. Make your profits at home"?

To avert an att.i.tude so fatal to any national policy of imperialism likely to lead to war, enthusiasm must be aroused and support secured.

This support may be sought by a two-fold appeal; to direct economic interest, and to the sentiment of patriotism. The two appeals are not sharply separated, but merge.

The economic argument for imperialism is that its advantages are in the end widely distributed. Better access to raw material and a wider market for manufactures {142} means a flouris.h.i.+ng national industry, steadier employment, better wages, and a prosperity of the whole population. A similar argument is made for investment in colonies.

The whole nation is benefited if its capital brings the largest returns, and these are to be obtained only abroad and by an imperialist policy.

This diversion of profits, works itself out in various ways. By swelling the income of the wealthy cla.s.ses, foreign investment increases the expenditure at home for the labour of nationals, thus leading to steadier employment and higher wages. The servants of England are supported by India, Egypt and the Rand Mines, as also by the profits on New York real estate and American rails.[1] The distribution of such income, moreover, is a matter over which the British nation has the final say. The entire national dividend, whencesoever derived, is a fund out of which all social improvements may be paid. Social insurance, popular education, and other government projects for the national welfare are supported, and may be increasingly supported, by a taxation which in the form of income and inheritance taxes falls heavily on the rich. Such a policy, by creating a certain community of interest between cla.s.ses, gives to the entire population an economic interest in the wealth of the few. The profits from foreign, as from domestic investments, may be drawn upon at will for national purposes.

The importance of this development in its effect upon nationalism and imperialism has been largely overlooked. {143} We have heard much of the German doctrine of the State as Power, but have failed to realise how Germany, like certain other European nations, has used its powers of taxation and governmental expenditure to create for the ma.s.ses an ever larger stake in the national income. A policy, which increasingly taxes the rich for the benefit of the poor, establishes a certain unity in the commonwealth. Even the Socialist parties alter their allegiance. The early Socialists were aggressively anti-patriotic, opposing to all conceptions of nationalism the solidarity of the working cla.s.ses of the world. Karl Marx for example, declared that the workingman had no fatherland, "for in none is he a son." He was a nomad of society, doomed to a life hardly more secure, though far more burdensome, than that of the tramp or gipsy. Long before the war, however, many Socialists had accepted a more nationalistic view. Not only did wage-earners realise that they already partic.i.p.ated to some extent in the social surplus, but they also saw that their increasing political power would enable them to influence the future distribution of the national income, however that income were obtained.[2] Once this interest in the national dividend was a.s.sured, it became desirable, even to Socialists, to make that dividend as large as possible. The belief spread that all groups within a nation have common interests opposed to the interest of other nations. Thus the Austrian Socialist Dr. Otto Bauer in his "Imperialisms und die Nationalitaetsfrage" denies that the immediate interests of the wage-earners are the same in all countries and a.s.serts that the workers may {144} find good reason to side with the employers of their own nation against wage-earners and employers in another country. "We do not say that there are no conflicts of interests between the nations, but we say, on the contrary, that as long as exploitation and oppression continue, there will be conflicts of interests between nations."[3] From which follows the conclusion that until capitalism is destroyed, and that may take many decades, it is essential for the workman to develop the welfare of the wage-earners of his own country, rather than of the world in general.[4]

This argument is to immediate interest, which, as a rule, overrides considerations of ultimate interest. To the German workman, for example, it seems plain that English proletarians will not gain _his_ salvation; he must gain it himself. The German wage-earner must be better fed, clothed, housed, educated, organised, and all these needs translate themselves into more regular work, better paid. But if German industry is defeated by English industry, the German workman will suffer unemployment, reduction of wages, lockouts, unsuccessful strikes, and a decline in trade union members.h.i.+p. Such a retrogression means a {145} delaying of the ultimate working cla.s.s victory as well as a worse situation in the present. And, parenthetically, workingmen and Socialists, being ordinary men with the ambitions and appet.i.tes of ordinary men, do not spend seven evenings in the week in contemplation of a Co-operative Commonwealth any more than the average church-goer devotes his entire mind to the Day of Judgment. The German Socialist has his bowling club and his _Stammtisch_; he must buy shoes for the children and a new pipe for himself, and his weekly wages count more than his share in a new society, which will not come until he is dead.

Besides his wages, he is interested in his government insurance premiums, in the education of his children, in the things that he and his family and the families of his cla.s.s wish to enjoy. If imperialism appears to raise wages as well as profits, he is not likely to oppose it on sentimental grounds, especially as there are theorists who stand ready to prove that Imperialism is merely the last phase of Capitalism and will bring Socialism all the sooner.

And the argument for the beneficial reaction of imperialism upon wages seems at first glance convincing. The German workman sees that wages are high in England. He is told that the cause is the early British conquest of foreign markets.[5] His own rapid progress during recent {146} years he a.s.sociates with a simultaneous increase in German industry and foreign trade. If therefore the foreign field is to be extended, why is the German eternally to be left out in the division?

Such a workman does not like the methods used, but so long as markets are to be seized, whether Germany takes part or not, he is, with mental reservations, in favour of a "firm" policy.[6] He wants not war, but foreign markets. Let Germany become rich by means of imperialism and the wage-earner in due time will be able to get his share.

If such an appeal can be made to the socialist, it can be made with even greater success to the middle cla.s.ses, who have no anti-nationalistic prejudice and whose att.i.tude is easily influenced by that of the great capitalists. The influence of the imperialistic propaganda was shown in a searching a.n.a.lysis of German public opinion made in 1912 or 1913 by a Frenchman and reproduced in the French Yellow Book. The colonial expansion of France was regarded with intense irritation. "Germans" it was held, "still require outlets for their commerce, and they still desire economic and colonial expansion. This they consider as their right as they are growing every day, and the future belongs to them." The treaty of 1911 with France (concerning Morocco) is considered to be a defeat for Germany, and France is represented as bellicose. On these two points, all groups are unanimous, "deputies of all parties in the Reichstag, from Conservatives to Socialists, University men of Berlin, Halle, Jena and Marburg, students, teachers, employes, bank clerks, bankers, artisans, traders, manufacturers, doctors, lawyers, the editors of democratic and socialist newspapers, Jewish publicists, {147} members of the trade unions, pastors and shop-keepers of Brandenburg, _Junkers_ from Pomerania and shoe-makers of Stettin, the owners of castles, government officials, cures and the large farmers of Westphalia."[7] "The resentment felt in every part of the country is the same. All Germans, even the Socialists, resent our having taken their share in Morocco."

The German diplomatic defeat is a "national humiliation."[8]

The words "national humiliation" used by this French observer illuminates both the force and limits of the economic motive in throwing nations into imperialism. The desire for greater profits and higher wages present themselves not nakedly, but garbed with idealistic motives. "A decent respect for the opinion of mankind," as well as a desire to gain one's own self-respect, compels men to represent their more cra.s.sly egoistic desires as part of an ethical plan. It is not hypocrisy, but a transformation of material into ideal values.

Thus nationalism enters into the problem, and the appeal to the supposed interests of the ma.s.ses becomes an appeal to their "patriotism." The nation is outraged, humiliated, despised. Its honour, which is in reality its prestige and inflated self-esteem, is affected. Though not quite identical with the economic interests of the citizens, national honour has much to do with the conservation and furtherance of those interests. It is a mirror cracked and smudged with ancient dirt, which reflects imperfectly the economic motives of the cla.s.ses dominant in the nation.

The more primitive and instinctive a man, the more he is actuated by these idealistic elements. The crowds on {148} the London streets on Mafeking Day did not know what they wanted with the Rand mines, but they were true-blue Britishers, a trifle drunk but all the more patriotic. It is to this feeling of patriotism, sober or half-sober, to which the men who have something to gain from imperialism appeal.

The home nation has its sacred duty to perform to the backward country, which does not pay its debts and is rent by revolutions, fomented perhaps abroad. The home nation must not relinquish its arduous privilege. It must not haul down the flag. It must not defer to other nations. Beyond the seas there is to be created a New England, a New France, a New Germany, to which all the national virtues are to be transplanted. The emigrants now lost to alien lands will carry their flag with them, and the nation will no longer strew its seed upon the sand. This nation (whichever one it happens to be) has a divine mission, which it can never perform unless it has a suitable army and navy, and unless this day week it sends a battles.h.i.+p to a certain port in China or Africa.

This quasi-idealistic element in imperialism strongly reinforces the economic argument. The German, Englishman or Frenchman dreams of extending _his_ culture, _his_ language, _his_ influence, _his_ sovereignty. He takes pride in the thought that _his_ people rule in distant lands, in deserts and jungles, in islands lying in tropical seas, and on frozen tundras, where civilised man cannot live. It is this dim mystic conception, this sense of an identification of a man's small personality with a vast Imperium, that inspires the democracies, which year by year vote supplies for imperialistic ventures, far-sighted or absurd. Though this idealism is partly the expression of an unrecognised economic need, yet for the most part, though perhaps decreasingly, the average citizen looks at imperialism as a sort of _aura_ to his beloved nation, and the conceptions {149} of national prestige and of imperialistic dominion fuse.

Moreover, even the calmer minds are reached by the fundamental argument of the necessity for extension. They recognise that despite the brutality and bloodiness of colonialism, it at least represents a certain phase or form of an inevitable development, the creation of an economic unity of the World. Without colonial development, without an exploitation of unlocked resources, the industrial growth of the manufacturing countries cannot be maintained, and they will be thrown back upon their own meagre resources. So long as agriculture remains what it is to-day, the increasing millions of Western Europe, of j.a.pan, of the Eastern United States, must rely more and more upon their commerce with the backward states, and must take a hand in stimulating their production. The present nationalistic imperialism may not be the best, it is perhaps the very worst form, that this world integration might a.s.sume, but in any case the problem remains to be solved either by this or some other means.

As a consequence the opposition to our present nationalistic imperialism is tending to change from a merely negative att.i.tude to a positive programme for an imperialism at once humane, democratic and international. It is an imperialism, the ideal of which is to safe-guard the interests of the natives, to prepare them for self-government and to carry on this process not by compet.i.tion and war between the interested nations but by mutual agreements for a common benefit. The present cruelties and dangers are to be avoided. The nations are to unite in a joint, higher imperialism.

It is this ideal which is to-day informing some of the leading minds of Europe, an ideal which will convert the compet.i.tive imperialistic strivings of rival nations into a joint and beneficent rule of countries demonstrably {150} incapable of ruling themselves by a group of nations acting in the interest of the world. Such a pooling of claims is admittedly difficult and is likely to be opposed by immense vested interests of cla.s.ses and nations. It is this problem of a joint imperialism, the solution of which alone stands between Europe and the continuance of bitter strife and war.

[1] The profits from imperialism are only a part of the profits from foreign investment. In an economic sense, England, France, Germany, Holland and Belgium own parts of the United States, and the profits of the Pennsylvania Railroad go largely to Europe as do the profits of Egyptian railways. There is this difference: the United States retains control of the physical property, and can, if it wishes, tax these incomes out of existence, while Egypt can not.

[2] "'If social democracy is not yet in power, it has already a position of influence which carries certain obligations. Its word weighs very heavily in the scale.'"--Edward Bernstein, "Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus," p. 145, quoted by Jane T. Stoddart.

"The New Socialism," New York and London, p. 156.

[3] Quoted by William English Walling, "The Socialists and the War,"

New York, 1915, p. 19.

[4] "The improvement of the lot of the workers has as a necessary condition the prosperity of the industrial development; the ruin of commerce and industry would encompa.s.s their own ruin. In a speech delivered at Stuttgart, Mr. Wolfgang Heine, a socialist member of the Reichstag, declared that 'the economic solidarity of the nation exists despite all antagonism of interest between the cla.s.ses, and that if the German fatherland were conquered, the workers would suffer like the employers and even more than these.'" "The alliance between trade union socialism and military imperialism was manifested for the first time at the Stuttgart (International Socialist) Congress in 1907. The majority of German delegates, composed above all of trade union representatives, were opposed to the Marxist resolution condemning colonial wars."--"L'imperialisme des socialistes allemands," _La Revue_, vol. cxii. Paris, 1915.

[5] In their admirable "History of Trade Unionism" Sidney and Beatrice Webb ascribe the rapid increase in the growth and power of British trade unions after 1850 in large part to the development of British commerce and industry. "This success we attribute mainly to the spread of education among the rank and file, and the more practical counsels which began, after 1842, to influence the Trade Union world. But we must not overlook the effect of economic changes. The period between 1825 and 1848 (in which "magnificent hopes ended in bitter disillusionment") was remarkable for the frequency and acuteness of its commercial depressions. From 1850 industrial expansion was for many years both greater and steadier than in any previous period."

[6] This is the real but not the avowed policy of a large section of the workers, especially of trade unionists, in the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

[7] French Yellow Book, No. 5. The doc.u.ment, according to the German commentators is falsely dated.

[8] French Yellow Book, No. 1. Annexe I.

{151}

CHAPTER XII

THE AMERICAN DECISION

We have seen how in Europe the outward expansion, which leads to international friction and war, has been due to deep-lying economic motives acting on ordinarily peace-loving populations. We have seen how national interest, blended with cla.s.s interest, has distorted this expansion and has turned a wholesome process of world-development into a reckless scramble for territory and a perpetually latent warfare.

Lastly we have seen how in all countries broad sections of the population have been sickened by the stupid brutality and imminent peril of this unenlightened nationalic compet.i.tion and have groped for some plan by which commerce might expand and industry grow without the nations going to war.

Such a plan must involve a basis of agreement, if not a community of interest, among nations requiring economic security and industrial growth. The choice does not lie between national expansion and contraction but between an expansion which ranges the nations in hostile camps and one which affords more equal opportunities of development to all competing powers. For each nation it is a choice between a headlong national aggrandis.e.m.e.nt, which takes no account of the needs and ambitions of other powers and the development of an economic world system, in which the industrial growth of one nation does not mean the stagnation or destruction of its neighbours.

Like the nations of Europe, the United States is faced {152} with the necessity of making this decision. The problem presents itself less clearly to us, since in the past we have largely expanded within; we have been able to grow by a more intensive utilisation of what was already conceded to us instead of spreading out into regions where international compet.i.tion was intense. Those cla.s.ses which in other countries are strongly driven by economic interest towards imperialism were in America otherwise occupied. But to-day we are beginning to overflow our boundaries, and we tend already to do instinctively what in the future we may do of set purpose. The men who wish to use army and navy to obtain American concessions in Mexico, South America and China are not distantly related to the imperialists of Germany, who believed that Kiau-chau was a fair exchange for two dead missionaries, or to those of Great Britain and France who drove their nations into the Boer War and the Morocco imbroglio. Our anti-imperialists also are animated by ideals similar to those of European anti-imperialists.

The issue between these two groups and these two policies and ideals does not result in a single act of the national will. We do not go to the polls and vote once for all to be imperialistic or non-imperialistic, to grab what we can or seek a concert of the world.

The issue resolves itself into many immediate and seemingly unrelated decisions. What we shall do in Mexico to-day, what action we shall take in regard to a railroad concession in China, opposed by j.a.pan, what part we shall take in the coming peace negotiations are a few of the many decisions, which slowly crystallise into a national state of mind and finally into a national policy. The policy need not be absolutely rigid or consistent. While in the early days America decided upon a policy of isolation, we did occasionally interfere in Europe, and despite our emphatic Monroe {153} Doctrine, we made at least one agreement--the Clayton Bulwer Treaty--in flat contradiction to its principles.

The decision, which we are now making between Nationalistic Imperialism and Internationalism[1] is of vast moment. It is a decision which determines not only our foreign but our domestic policy. For Europe it is equally important, since it influences the balance of power between those groups that are fighting for and those fighting against imperialism and militarism. By our comparative freedom of action, we can exert an immense influence either in accentuating the struggle between the industrial nations or in promoting a concert of action, based upon a discovered community of interest.

How we shall in the end decide is not yet certain. Though we are still upon the whole anti-imperialistic, voices already are raised in favour of a vigorous imperialistic policy. "The imperialism of the American,"

writes one defender of a policy of indefinite expansion, "is a duty and credit to humanity. He is the highest type of imperial master. He makes beautiful the land he touches; beautiful with moral and physical cleanliness.... There should be no doubt that even with all possible moral refinement, it is the absolute right of a nation to live to its full intensity, to expand, to found colonies, to get richer and richer by any proper means such as armed {154} conquest, commerce, diplomacy.

Such expansion as an aim is an inalienable right and in the case of the United States it is a particular duty, because we are idealists and are therefore bound by establis.h.i.+ng protectorates over the weak to protect them from unmoral Kultur."[2]

It is not given to all imperialists to present their case with so nave a self-deception. Not all would argue that it is our duty "to get richer and richer by ... armed conquest" to avert the "unmoral Kultur"

of some other nation which also desires to get richer and richer. Yet in many other forms our imperialistic drift appears. Voices call upon us to perform deeds of blood and valour, which bring national renown.

Ardent prophecies reveal that we shall become the first maritime power of the world and that we "are born to rule seas, as the Romans were to conquer the world." But in the main American imperialistic sentiment is not vocal. It manifests itself in a vague determination to push American "interests" everywhere; to control Mexico and the Caribbean countries, to exert an increasing influence in South America, to be a decisive factor in China's exploitation. Just how all these ambitions are to conflict with those of other imperialistic nations, our imperialists have not yet determined. Let us be strong enough in our own might and in our alliances and we can take what we want and find excellent reasons for the taking.

Such a policy is not less dangerous because inchoate and undirected.

It is all the more dangerous on that account. Without thoroughly understanding the World into which they inject their undefined ambitions, our imperialists have not advanced far beyond a mental att.i.tude. They are {155} anxious to conquer and rule, to exert economic, financial and military dominion, but their future domains are not yet surveyed.

This new spirit has been strengthened by the pa.s.sing of our isolation.

Since we cannot hold aloof, our imperialists believe that we must do as other nations do, seize our fortune at any risk. We must repudiate "our idealistic past," cease to be a dilettante in international relations.h.i.+ps, take our share of the burden and get our share of the profits in the scrimmage which we call nationalistic imperialism. If we cannot live by ourselves, let us live as do other aggressive nations.