XI. THE GREAT WAR
1. Daylight
The work of industrial empire building had continued for less than half a century when the United States entered the Great War, which was one in a sequence of events that bound America to the wheel of destiny as it bound England and France and Germany and Japan and every other country that had adopted the capitalist method of production.
The war-test revealed the United States to the world and to its own people as a great nation playing a mighty rôle in international affairs. Most Europeans had not suspected the extent of its power. Even the Americans did not realize it. Nevertheless, the processes of economic empire building had laid a foundation upon which the superstructure of political empire is reared as a matter of course. Henceforth, no one need ask whether the United States should or should not be an imperial nation. There remained only the task of determining what form American imperialism should take.
The Great War rounded out the imperial beginnings of the United States. It strengthened the plutocracy at home; it gave the United States immense prestige abroad.
The Era of Imperialism dawned upon the United States in 1898. Daylight broke in 1914, and the night of isolation and of international unimportance gave place to a new day of imperial power.
2. Plutocracy in the Saddle
The rapid sweep across a new continent had placed the resources of the United States in the hands of a powerful minority. Nature had been generous and private ownership of the inexhaustible wilderness seemed to be the natural—the obvious method of procedure.