Part 10 (2/2)
In measuring this pressure, we are dealing with relatives, not absolutes. During many centuries the Chinese coolies have become so accommodated to a meagre life that they do not seek to conquer other nations but choose rather to starve quietly within their walls. There is a higher standard of living in Germany to-day than in the more pacific Germany of seventy years ago, but desires have increased more rapidly than wages. As a result the nation is forced outwards.
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Though in many respects conditions of life in America are improving, discontent and frustrated ambition increase. As our numbers grow, farms become relatively scarce, and a cla.s.s of tenant farmers and an agricultural proletariat develop. The chances of success for both these cla.s.ses are slighter than a generation ago. Manufacturing is conducted on an ever larger scale and the opportunity to rise is becoming less. The openings in retail trade, though many, are small, and there are vast numbers of failures. Wages are less in relation to the standards of living surrounding the workman, and fear of unemployment is chronic. The country is full of poor men with no firm purchase on life. Income, it is true, is more evenly distributed than property, but even here a cra.s.s inequality reigns. Upon the wage-earners falls the heavy incidence of industrial injuries, disease, and unemployment.
It is of such conditions that imperialism and wars are made. To develop millions of landless men without wealth and with precarious jobs is to create a material superlatively inflammable. You can appeal to such men for a ”strong” policy that will conquer foreign markets and therefore ”jobs.” There is a group much lower in economic status--the men submerged below the poverty line. These men, with no money in their pockets and no steady employment, but with voices, votes and newspaper organs, are susceptible to jingoism. They have a high narrow sensibility created by precariousness and hunger. Here we are creating a culture for war bacteria. The concentration of wealth at the top of our society acts similarly. We are developing in America, the type of big business adventurer, who desires an aggressive foreign policy, not only for his direct business interests, but also to allay unrest at home by pointing a minatory finger at the foreigner beyond our borders.
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Already we have many of the elements that go to make up the war spirit.
In the present conflict we have been pacific owing to the division of our sympathies, the deadening realisation of the immense forces engaged and losses incurred, and the realisation that our interests were not involved. To these factors there was added a sudden prosperity contingent upon our remaining at peace. But even as early as 1898, when the proletarisation of America was less developed, we had millions of inflamed patriots, who would willingly have fought all Europe rather than ”haul down our flag” in the Philippines. What will happen twenty years from now, when our export trade is greater and more necessary and when (unless we change conditions) there will be more poverty and insecurity than to-day? If at such a time Germany, j.a.pan or Russia, or all three, determine upon an action, which will injure our pretensions and throw many of our citizens out of work, we shall surely feel resentment. We cannot safely predict that we will adopt a gentle att.i.tude. Like France in 1870, like Russia in 1905, we may stumble into a war over our rights and pretensions, may be rushed into it not only because of a conflict of interests which we did not foresee but because of a vicious internal development which we did not avert.
All our customary self-a.s.surances that we shall never fight nations now friendly are mere deception. So we thought just before the war of 1812. We were never more pacific than in 1895 when we ventured on a desperate challenge to England, or in 1898 when we attacked Spain.
Though we averted war with Germany over the _Lusitania_ matter, our public mind was so uninformed that we might easily have been pushed into the conflict by a more bellicose President. We should have a better chance of keeping the peace if we were not so blindly confident of our {165} peacefulness. It takes only one to make a quarrel, and the aggressor might not impossibly be ourselves. Nor can peace be predicted on the ground that we have given no offence and do not intend to give offence. The other nation will be the judge of that. And if we become imperialistic we shall have given offence enough.
Neither will our religion, our almost universal Christianity, strike the weapons from our hands. It is doubtful whether religion ever kept a nation out of war. The Germans and the English are both Christian peoples and therefore quite willing to fight G.o.d's battle, which is their battle. If a crisis arose in America out of our economic conflicts with Europe and our own psychological instability, we should find the ministers of the Gospel on the same side as the editors, politicians, and the people generally, as they have been at most times when peace has been threatened. A war rooted perhaps in the rival interests of American and foreign oil companies in Venezuela would be hailed on both sides as a battle for civilisation and the Lord. Not even our diversity of racial stocks would prevent such a war, though it would no doubt make us hesitant. We should be loath to fight against Germany, Austria, Italy or England, because of the presence in our midst of natives of these lands. Once the fighting had begun, however, all opposition would be overcome, and the war would go on despite its spiritual costs.
If we are to decide therefore not for imperialism and imperialistic wars but for a policy which will mean peace for ourselves and peace and international reorganisation for Europe and the World, we must begin our labours at home. Unless we are able to build a democratic civilisation upon the basis of a thoroughly scientific utilisation of our own resources, unless we so direct our American development that we shall not be forced to fight for a {166} larger share of the remaining exploitable regions, we shall make little progress towards a settlement of the grave problems which now divide the nations. To promote an economic internationalism we must make our own internal economic development sound; to help cure the World we must maintain our own health. Internationalism begins at home.
[1] It is difficult to find terms in which to express clearly the two policies between which we are choosing. In a sense the issue is between imperialism and internationalism, but since any international attempt to solve the problem of the backward countries must lead to some joint occupation, exploitation or dominion, which may be called imperialistic, the opposition of the two terms is not complete. Nor do the terms Nationalism and Internationalism describe the two policies.
The internationalism for which we are striving does not negate nationalism. It is not a cosmopolitanism, a world-union of undifferentiated and denationalized individuals, but a policy of compounding and accommodating permanent and distinct national interests.
[2] _Seven Seas Magazine_ (Organ of the Navy League of the United States), Nov., 1915, pp. 27-28.
[3] F. Garcia Calderon, ”Latin-America. Its Rise and Progress.” New York, 1915, p. 390.
[4] A second prophecy of Senor Calderon is to the effect that ”unless some extraordinary event occurs to disturb the evolution of the modern peoples, the great nations of industrial Europe and j.a.pan, the champion of Asiatic integrity, will oppose the formidable progress of the United States.”--_Op. cit._, 389.
[5] Mahan (A. T.), ”Possibilities of an Anglo-American Reunion.”
_North American Review_, July, 1894.
[6] _Round Table_, London, May, 1911, pp. 251-2 (?).
[7] The combined white population of New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland and Canada (in 1911) was only 14.2 millions, or almost exactly the increase in the (total) population of Continental United States in the one decade ending 1910. The white population of the United States already const.i.tutes 4/7 of the total white English-speaking population of the world. Moreover, population is increasing far more rapidly in the United States than in the six British nations.
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PART III
TOWARDS ECONOMIC INTERNATIONALISM
CHAPTER XIII
NATURAL RESOURCES AND PEACE
For the United States to attempt to secure an economic internationalism, which shall form the basis of an enduring peace, is to enter upon a task which bristles with difficulties. These difficulties fall into two cla.s.ses, those which tend to deprive America of her freedom of action and disqualify her for leaders.h.i.+p, and those which are found in deep antagonisms among the nations to be reconciled.
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