In a recent report issued by the Agricultural Department at Washington is a paragraph to the effect that one of the main factors which have operated against the development of the American farm is the difficulty that the farmer has found in securing abundant capital and the high price that he has to pay for it when he can secure it. It will in the future be of still higher price, and still less abundant, because, of course, the capital of the world is a common reservoir—if it is dearer in one part, it is dearer to some extent in all parts.
So that if for many years the American farmhouse is not so well built as it might be, the farm not so well worked, rural life in America not so attractive as it might be, the farmer's wife burdened with a little more labor than she might otherwise have, and if she grows old earlier than she might otherwise, it will be in part because we are paying our share of the war indemnities and the war costs.
But this scarcity of capital operates in another way. One of the most promising fields for American enterprise is, of course, in the undeveloped lands to the south of us, but in the development of those lands we have looked and must look for the co-operation of European capital. Millions of French and British money have poured into South America, building docks and railroads and opening up the country, and that development of South America has been to our advantage because quite frequently these enterprises were under the actual management of Americans, using to the common advantage the savings of the thrifty Frenchman and the capital of the wealthy Englishman.
For, of course, as between the older and the newer worlds there has gone on this very beneficent division of labor: the Old World having developed its soil, built its cities, made its roads, has more capital available for outside employment than have the population of newer countries that have so much of this work before them. And now this possibility of fruitful co-operation is, for the time being, and it may be for many years, suspended. I say nothing of the loss of markets in the older countries which will be occasioned by sheer loss of population and the lower standard of living. That is one of the more obvious but not perhaps the most important of the ways in which the war affects us commercially.
Speaking purely in terms of commercial advantage—and these, I know, do not tell the whole story (I am not for a moment pretending they do)—the losses that we shall suffer through this war are probably very much more considerable than those we should suffer by the loss of the Philippines in the event, say, of their being seized by some hostile power; and we suffer these losses, although not a single foreign soldier lands upon our soil. It is literally and precisely true to say that there is not one person from Hudson Bay to Cape Horn that will not be affected in some degree by what is now going on in Europe. And it is at least conceivable that our children and children's children will feel its effects more deeply still.
Nor is America escaping the military any more than she has escaped the commercial and financial effects of this war. She may never be drawn into active military co-operation with other nations, but she is affected none the less. Indeed the military effects of this war are already revealing themselves in a demand for a naval programme immensely larger than any American could have anticipated a year ago, by plans for an enormously enlarged army. All this is the most natural result.
Just consider, for instance, the ultimate effect of a quite possible outcome of the present conflict—Germany victorious and the Prussian effort next directed at, say, the conquest of India. Imagine India Prussianized by Germany, so that, with the marvelous efficiency in military organization which she has shown, she is able to draw on an Asiatic population of something approaching 400,000,000.
Whether the situation then created would really constitute a menace for us or not, this much would be certain—that the more timid and timorous among us would believe it to be a menace, and it would furnish an irresistible plea for a very greatly enlarged naval and military establishment. We too, in that case would probably be led to organize our nation on the lines on which the European military nations have organized theirs, with compulsory military service, and so forth.
Indeed, even if Germany is not victorious the future contains possibilities of a like result; imagine, what is quite possible, that Russia becomes the dominant factor in Europe after this war and places herself at the head of a great Slav confederacy of 200,000,000, with her power extending incidentally to the Pacific coast of Asia, and, it may be the day after tomorrow, over 100,000,000 or 200,000,000 of Asiatics. We should thus have a militarized power of 200,000,000 or 300,000,000 or 400,000,000 souls, autocratically governed, endowed with western technical knowledge in the manipulation of the instruments of war, occupying the Pacific coast line directly facing our Pacific coast line. It is quite conceivable, therefore, that as the outcome of either of the two possible results of this war we may find ourselves embarked upon a great era of militarization.
Our impregnability does not protect us from militarism. It is quite true that this country, like Russia, cannot be permanently invaded; it is quite true that hostile navies need not necessarily be resisted by navies of our own so far as the protection of our coasts is concerned. But there is no such thing as absolute certainty in these matters. While personally I believe that no country in the world will ever challenge the United States, that the chances are a hundred to one against it, it is on just that one chance that the militarist bases his plea for armaments and secures them.