The people of the world know these things. The inhabitants of Latin America know them by bitter experience. The inhabitants of Europe and of Asia know them by hearsay. Both in the West and in the East, the United States is known as "The New Germany."
That means that the peoples of these countries look upon the United States and her foreign policies in exactly the same way that the people of the United States were taught to regard Germany and her foreign policies. To them the United States is a great, rich, brutal Empire, setting her heel and laying her fist where necessity calls. Men and women inside the United States think of themselves and of their fellow citizens as human beings. The people in the other countries read the records of the lynchings, the robberies and the murders inside the United States; of the imperial aggression toward Latin America, and they are learning to believe that the United States is made up of ruthless conquerors who work their will on those that cross their path.
The plain American men and women, living quietly in their simple homes, are none the less citizens of an aggressive, conquering Empire. They may not have a thought directed against the well-being of a single human creature, but they pay their taxes into the public treasury; they vote for imperialism on each election day; they read imperialism in their papers and hear it preached in their churches, and when the call comes, their sons will go to the front and shed their blood in the interest of the imperial class.
The plain people of the German Empire did not desire to harm their fellows, nevertheless, they furnished the cannon-fodder for the Great War. America's plain folks, by merely following the doctrine, "My country, right or wrong—America first!" will find themselves, at no very distant date, exactly where the German people found themselves in 1914.
6. The Price
The historic record, in the matter of empire, is uniform. The masters gain; the workers pay.
The workers of the United States will not be exempt from these inexorable necessities of imperialism. On the contrary they will be called upon to pay the same price for empire that the workers in Britain have paid; that the workers in the other empires have paid. What is the price? What will world empire cost the American workers?
1. It will cost them their liberties. An empire cannot be run by a debating society. Empires must act. In order to make this action mobile and efficacious, authority must be centered in the hands of a small group—the ruling class, whose will shall determine imperial policy. Self-government is inconsistent with imperialism.
2. The workers will not only lose their own liberties, but they will be compelled to take liberties away from the peoples that are brought under the domination of the Empire. Self-determination is the direct opposite of imperialism.
3. The American workers, as a part of the price of empire, will be compelled to produce surplus wealth—wealth which they can never consume; wealth the control of which passes into the hands of the imperial ruling class, to be invested by them in the organization of the Empire and the exploitation of the resources and other economic opportunities of the dependent territory.