This may at first glance seem a paradox. Why should we fight Germany or Japan because our agriculture is inefficient or our fiscal policy inadequate or because our wealthy are too wealthy and our poor too poor? Yet the connection is close. Bellicosity is not spontaneous, a thing evolved out of nothing. Peoples do not fight when they have what they want, but only when they are frustrated and cramped and need air and elbow room. War is like emigration. The individual migrant leaves home for personal reasons, but the great movement of emigration is nothing but an escape from worse to better economic conditions. If the natural resources of a nation are too small or are badly utilised the resulting insecurity and poverty may lead to international conflicts. Or if the national economy though otherwise efficient and self-contained is so ordered that huge masses of the population are impoverished and destitute, there will always be a centrifugal force inciting to foreign adventures and wars. Where there is no place at home for "younger sons" they will seek a place outside.
Nowhere can one study this tremendous internal outward-driving pressure better than in Japan. That nation, though extremely poor, spends huge sums upon armies, navies and fortifications, and engages in a dangerous and perhaps eventually fatal conflict with other powers. But it is not pride of race or dynastic ambition which compels Japan to enter upon these imperialistic courses, but a sheer lack of economic reserves. Her area, not including Korea, Formosa, Sakhalin, etc., is 149,000 square miles, or less than that of California, while her population (1914) is 56,000,000. Moreover, Japan is so extraordinarily mountainous that the greater part of her area is unfitted for agriculture. Despite a very low standard of living, therefore, and a highly intensive culture, the land cannot feed the population, and foodstuffs must be imported. The population is growing with great rapidity, the excess of births over deaths amounting to over six hundred thousand a year.
Nor has Japan a sufficient outlet through emigration. The immigration of Japanese into Australia, British Columbia, the United States and South Africa is practically prohibited. Most parts of Eastern Asia are too crowded with men living still lower in the scale to permit any large infiltration of Japanese. To Japan, therefore, there are but two alternatives to an ultimate famine: the settlement of Korea and Manchuria, and industrialism. For industrialism, however, Japan is rather ill-fitted by tradition and lack of raw materials. Her best chance is to sell to China and to develop Manchuria and Korea, in both of which directions she runs counter to European ambitions. As a result, Japan becomes imperialistic and militaristic.
The American temptation to imperialism is far weaker than is that of Japan. There is for us no overwhelming necessity to enter upon a scramble for new territories or to fight wars to secure such territories. Our aggressiveness is latent, though with a capacity for growth. There are two ways to lessen this potential aggressiveness. The first is to weaken economic interests favouring imperialism and war and strengthen opposed interests; the second is to build up in the people a tough intellectual and emotional resistance to martial incitement. The remedy resolves itself into two factors, economic completeness and internal stability and equality.
Economic completeness depends in the first place upon a certain relation between natural resources and population. If the fields and mines of a country are too unproductive or its population excessive, there will be an inevitable leaning upon the resources of foreign countries and an intense competition for new territory, trade or investment facilities. A nation, however, may possess most of the elements of economic completeness and yet suffer through a bad geographical position. Its commerce, even its coast-wise commerce, may be at the mercy of a foreign country, or it may not control the mouths of its own rivers, or may be shut off completely from the sea. Switzerland, Hungary, Bohemia cannot secure their economic independence of Spain or France, but must depend upon the good will of other nations. Because of such geographical conditions an otherwise pacific nation may fail completely to build up a resistance to war.
An event in our own history will illustrate this point. From 1783 to 1803, our settlers in the Ohio Valley were entirely dependent for the sale of their products upon an outlet through the Mississippi River. Unless Spain and later France would permit the rude arks, laden with tobacco, flour and bacon, to unload at New Orleans, the West would be shut off from markets. Railroads had not yet been invented and there were no good roads over the mountains. Animosity towards the owner of New Orleans was therefore inevitable,[[1]] since unless we could control the mouth of the Mississippi, we could not secure the allegiance of our own settlers west of the Alleghenies. The interests of our citizens lay beyond our borders; the key to our door was in the hands of a foreign power. But for the lucky accident that peacefully gave us Louisiana, we should sooner or later have been forced into war. The cession of this territory tended to establish for us an economic completeness.
An economic completeness for the United States does not of course mean that we should become a hermit nation, absolutely shut up within our tariff walls. It would be manifestly undesirable to prohibit foreign commerce or the foreign investment of American capital and no such sacrifice, even if possible, would be necessary to prevent a too violent friction with Europe. There is a more direct way in which to increase America's economic reliance upon herself and diminish her dependence upon the accidents and hostilities of the world competition. It can be done by a better utilisation of our own resources. As yet we have merely skimmed the cream of one of the richest parts of the earth, and have exploited, rather than developed, our great continental territory. We have been superficial not thorough, hasty not scientific, in our utilisation of our resources. We have still a margin in which further to develop agriculture and other great extractive industries in order to lay at home the basis for a population which is bound to increase during the coming decades.
How great our friction with Europe is to be will depend on whether our economic development in the main is to consist of activities which impinge upon those of the great industrial countries or of activities which do not so impinge, whether for example, five per cent. or thirty per cent. of our people are to be engaged in industries which actively compete in foreign markets with the industries of Europe. Certain of our economic activities are for us pacific in tendency, inasmuch as they do not affect industrial Europe or actually benefit her. Of such a nature is agriculture. Every added bushel of wheat or bale of cotton raised in the United States improves the chances of European industry, lessens our competition with Europe and increases our market for European wares. The same is largely true of our production of copper, gold, silver, petroleum and other natural products. Upon these extractive enterprises, including coal and iron ore, is based a vast manufacturing industry which supplies our home population, and an immense transportation and commercial system which has its roots in our home resources. Our railroads do not appreciably compete with those of England and Germany; on the contrary the industrial progress of those countries is hastened by the development of our transportation system, which cheapens their food and raw materials. On the other hand a development of the American carrying trade, a growth of ship-building, shipping and export trade, however necessary or desirable, trenches immediately upon British and German shipbuilding, carrying and export trade, and leads directly and inevitably to economic conflict.[[2]]
The dependence of our economic mutuality with Europe upon our agriculture may be illustrated by an hypothesis. Assume that our agricultural products were permanently cut in half while our population remained constant. We should have no food to export and would be obliged to import food. Millions of men would be forced out of agriculture into manufacturing industries, and as the home demand for these industries would be lessened a foreign market would be essential. Our railroad traffic would diminish, and railroad workers, thrown out of employment, would enter the export trade. We should be forced to secure foreign markets, and if political pressure were necessary, it would be forthcoming. Similarly, our chances for investment in agriculture and in railroad and industrial companies being lessened, capital would be forced to find an outlet in other countries, especially in semi-developed lands to which European capital flows. The rate of interest would fall, big risks would be taken, and if American investments were endangered by unrest or disorder in the backward country, our government would intervene. We should have no choice and could afford no scruples. Given such a fall in our agricultural product, the country would become imperialistic and bellicose, and there would be not the remotest possibility of our taking the lead in a policy to promote international peace.