The more primitive and instinctive a man, the more he is actuated by these idealistic elements. The crowds on the London streets on Mafeking Day did not know what they wanted with the Rand mines, but they were true-blue Britishers, a trifle drunk but all the more patriotic. It is to this feeling of patriotism, sober or half-sober, to which the men who have something to gain from imperialism appeal. The home nation has its sacred duty to perform to the backward country, which does not pay its debts and is rent by revolutions, fomented perhaps abroad. The home nation must not relinquish its arduous privilege. It must not haul down the flag. It must not defer to other nations. Beyond the seas there is to be created a New England, a New France, a New Germany, to which all the national virtues are to be transplanted. The emigrants now lost to alien lands will carry their flag with them, and the nation will no longer strew its seed upon the sand. This nation (whichever one it happens to be) has a divine mission, which it can never perform unless it has a suitable army and navy, and unless this day week it sends a battleship to a certain port in China or Africa.
This quasi-idealistic element in imperialism strongly reinforces the economic argument. The German, Englishman or Frenchman dreams of extending his culture, his language, his influence, his sovereignty. He takes pride in the thought that his people rule in distant lands, in deserts and jungles, in islands lying in tropical seas, and on frozen tundras, where civilised man cannot live. It is this dim mystic conception, this sense of an identification of a man's small personality with a vast Imperium, that inspires the democracies, which year by year vote supplies for imperialistic ventures, far-sighted or absurd. Though this idealism is partly the expression of an unrecognised economic need, yet for the most part, though perhaps decreasingly, the average citizen looks at imperialism as a sort of aura to his beloved nation, and the conceptions of national prestige and of imperialistic dominion fuse.
Moreover, even the calmer minds are reached by the fundamental argument of the necessity for extension. They recognise that despite the brutality and bloodiness of colonialism, it at least represents a certain phase or form of an inevitable development, the creation of an economic unity of the World. Without colonial development, without an exploitation of unlocked resources, the industrial growth of the manufacturing countries cannot be maintained, and they will be thrown back upon their own meagre resources. So long as agriculture remains what it is to-day, the increasing millions of Western Europe, of Japan, of the Eastern United States, must rely more and more upon their commerce with the backward states, and must take a hand in stimulating their production. The present nationalistic imperialism may not be the best, it is perhaps the very worst form, that this world integration might assume, but in any case the problem remains to be solved either by this or some other means.
As a consequence the opposition to our present nationalistic imperialism is tending to change from a merely negative attitude to a positive programme for an imperialism at once humane, democratic and international. It is an imperialism, the ideal of which is to safe-guard the interests of the natives, to prepare them for self-government and to carry on this process not by competition and war between the interested nations but by mutual agreements for a common benefit. The present cruelties and dangers are to be avoided. The nations are to unite in a joint, higher imperialism.
It is this ideal which is to-day informing some of the leading minds of Europe, an ideal which will convert the competitive imperialistic strivings of rival nations into a joint and beneficent rule of countries demonstrably incapable of ruling themselves by a group of nations acting in the interest of the world. Such a pooling of claims is admittedly difficult and is likely to be opposed by immense vested interests of classes and nations. It is this problem of a joint imperialism, the solution of which alone stands between Europe and the continuance of bitter strife and war.
[[1]] The profits from imperialism are only a part of the profits from foreign investment. In an economic sense, England, France, Germany, Holland and Belgium own parts of the United States, and the profits of the Pennsylvania Railroad go largely to Europe as do the profits of Egyptian railways. There is this difference: the United States retains control of the physical property, and can, if it wishes, tax these incomes out of existence, while Egypt can not.
[[2]] "'If social democracy is not yet in power, it has already a position of influence which carries certain obligations. Its word weighs very heavily in the scale.'"—Edward Bernstein, "Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus," p. 145, quoted by Jane T. Stoddart. "The New Socialism," New York and London, p. 156.
[[3]] Quoted by William English Walling, "The Socialists and the War," New York, 1915, p. 19.
[[4]] "The improvement of the lot of the workers has as a necessary condition the prosperity of the industrial development; the ruin of commerce and industry would encompass their own ruin. In a speech delivered at Stuttgart, Mr. Wolfgang Heine, a socialist member of the Reichstag, declared that 'the economic solidarity of the nation exists despite all antagonism of interest between the classes, and that if the German fatherland were conquered, the workers would suffer like the employers and even more than these.'" "The alliance between trade union socialism and military imperialism was manifested for the first time at the Stuttgart (International Socialist) Congress in 1907. The majority of German delegates, composed above all of trade union representatives, were opposed to the Marxist resolution condemning colonial wars."—"L'imperialisme des socialistes allemands," La Révue, vol. cxii. Paris, 1915.
[[5]] In their admirable "History of Trade Unionism" Sidney and Beatrice Webb ascribe the rapid increase in the growth and power of British trade unions after 1850 in large part to the development of British commerce and industry. "This success we attribute mainly to the spread of education among the rank and file, and the more practical counsels which began, after 1842, to influence the Trade Union world. But we must not overlook the effect of economic changes. The period between 1825 and 1848 (in which "magnificent hopes ended in bitter disillusionment") was remarkable for the frequency and acuteness of its commercial depressions. From 1850 industrial expansion was for many years both greater and steadier than in any previous period."