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 Cæsars. 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 uncoördinated. 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.