[[7]] The combined white population of New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Newfoundland and Canada (in 1911) was only 14.2 millions, or almost exactly the increase in the (total) population of Continental United States in the one decade ending 1910. The white population of the United States already constitutes 4/7 of the total white English-speaking population of the world. Moreover, population is increasing far more rapidly in the United States than in the six British nations.
PART III
TOWARDS ECONOMIC INTERNATIONALISM
CHAPTER XIII
NATURAL RESOURCES AND PEACE
For the United States to attempt to secure an economic internationalism, which shall form the basis of an enduring peace, is to enter upon a task which bristles with difficulties. These difficulties fall into two classes, those which tend to deprive America of her freedom of action and disqualify her for leadership, and those which are found in deep antagonisms among the nations to be reconciled. America cannot succeed in her efforts to bring about an economic internationalism if she herself is economically or psychologically unstable or if her own foreign policy is grasping, aggressive and imperialistic. Nor can she succeed unless her efforts are wisely directed towards the solution of the real problems which now divide the world.
In all such discussions we are likely to take America's pacific intentions in the future for granted. Such an assumption, however, is unwarranted. To-day the peace-maker is the organiser of the world and no nation can lead in the peace movement, nor even be assured of its own peace, unless it has reached a certain stage of economic stability and is organised on a reasonably satisfactory economic basis. Our danger of war lies partly within. If we launch out upon an imperialistic policy, placing our vital national interests within the area of keen international rivalry, we shall be in peril of a war, evoked by ourselves.
The time to prevent such a conflict is not immediately before its threatened outbreak but during the period in which the forces making for war are slowly maturing. These forces, in our case at least, take their rise in home conditions. Our chance of peace with England, Germany, Japan or Russia twenty or thirty years from now depends upon what we do with our own territory and our own resources to-day.