The building of international industrial empires by the progressive business men of the United States lays the foundation for whatever political imperialism is necessary to protect markets, trade and investment. Gathering floods of economic surplus are the driving forces which are guided by ambition and love of gain and power.
The United States emerged from the Great War in a position of unquestioned economic supremacy. With vast stores of all the necessary resources, amply equipped with capital, the country has entered the field as the most dangerous rival that the other capitalist nations must face. Possessed of everything, including the means of providing a navy of any reasonable size and an army of any necessary number, the United States looms as the dominating economic factor in the capitalist world.
Imperial policy is frequently bold, rough and at times frankly brutal and unjust. Where subject peoples and weaker neighbors submit to the dictates of the ruling power there is no friction. But where the subject peoples or smaller states attempt to assert their rights of self-determination or of independence, the empire acts as Great Britain has acted in Ireland and in India; as Italy and France have acted in Africa; as Japan has acted in Korea; as the United States has acted in the Philippines, in Hayti, in Nicaragua, and in Mexico.
Plain men do not like these things. Animated by the belief in popular rights which is so prevalent among the western peoples, the masses resent imperial atrocities. Therefore it becomes necessary to surround imperial action with such an atmosphere as will convince the man on the street that the acts are necessary or else that they are inevitable.
When the Church and the State stood together the Czar and the Kaiser spoke for God as well as for the financial interests. There was thus a double sanction—imperial necessity coupled with divine authority. Those who were not willing to accept the necessity felt enough reverence for the authority to bow their heads in submission to whatever policy the masters of empire might inaugurate.
The course of empire upon which the United States has embarked involves a complete departure from all of the most cherished traditions of the American people. Economic, political and social theories must all be thrust aside. Liberty, equality and fraternity must all be forgotten and in their places must be erected new standards of imperial purpose that are acceptable to the economic and political masters of present day American life.
The American people have been taught the language of liberty. They believe in freedom for self-determination. Their own government was born as a protest against imperial tyranny and they glory in its origin and speak proudly of its revolutionary background. Americans are still individualists. Their lives and thoughts both have been provincial—perhaps somewhat narrow. They profess the doctrine "Live and let live" and in a large measure they are willing and anxious to practice it.
How is it possible to harmonize the Declaration of Independence with the subjugation of peoples and the conquest of territory? If governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," and if it is the right of a people to alter or to abolish any government which does not insure their safety and happiness, then manifestly subjugation and conquest are impossible.
The letter and the spirit of the Declaration of Independence contradict the letter and spirit of imperial purpose word for word and line for line. There can be no harmony between these two theories of social life.