The rulers of antiquity were limited by a lack of transportation

facilities; their "world" was small, including the basin of the

Mediterranean and the land surrounding the Persian Gulf and the Indian

Ocean, nevertheless, they set out, one after another, to conquer it.

To-day the rapid accumulation of surplus and the speed and ease of

communication, the spread of world knowledge and the larger means of

organization make it even more necessary than it was of old for the

rulers of an empire to find a larger and ever larger place in the sun.

The forces are more pressing than ever before. The times call more

loudly for a genius with imagination, foresight and courage who will use

the power at his disposal to write into political history the gains that

have already been made a part of economic life. Let such a one arise in

the United States, in the present chaos of public thought, and he could

not only himself dictate American public policy for the remainder of his

life, but in addition, he could, within a decade, have the whole

territory from the Canadian border to the Panama Canal under the

American Flag, either as conquered or subject territory; he could

establish a Chinese wall around South American trade and opportunities

by a very slight extension of the Monroe Doctrine; he could have in hand

the problem of an economic if not a political union with Canada, and

could be prepared to measure swords with the nearest economic rival,

either on the high seas or in any portion of the world where it might

prove necessary to join battle.

Such a program would be a departure from the traditions of American

public life, but the traditions, built by a nation of farmers, have

already lost their significance. They are historic, with no contemporary

justification. The economic life that has grown up since 1870 of

necessity will create new public policies.

The success of such a program would depend upon four things:

1. A coordination of American economic life.

2. A fast grip on the agencies for shaping public opinion.

3. A body of citizens, martial, confident, restless, ambitious.

4. A ruling class with sufficient imagination to paint, in warm

sympathetic colors, the advantages of world dominion; and with

sufficient courage to follow out imperial policy, regardless of ethical

niceties, to its logical goal of world conquest.

All four of these requisites exist in the United States to-day, awaiting

the master hand that shall unite them. Many of the leaders of American

public life know this. Some shrink from the issue, because they are

unaccustomed to dream great dreams, and are terrified by the immensity

of large thoughts. Others lack the courage to face the new issues. Still

others are steadily maneuvering themselves into a position where they

may take advantage of a crisis to establish their authority and work

their imperial will. The situation grows daily more inviting; the

opportunity daily more alluring. The war-horse, saddled and bridled, is

pawing the earth and neighing. How soon will the rider come?

4. _Eat or Be Eaten_

The American ruling class has been thrown into a position of authority

under a system of international economic competition that calls for

initiative and courage. Under this system, there are two

possibilities,--eat or be eaten!

There is no middle ground, no half way measure. It is impossible to

stop or to turn back. Like men engaged on a field of battle, the

contestants in this international economic struggle must remain with

their faces toward the enemy, fighting for every inch that they gain,

and holding these gains with their bodies and their blood, or else they

must turn their backs, throw away their weapons, run for their lives,

and then, hiding on the neighboring hills, watch while the enemy

despoils the camp, and then applies a torch to the ruins.

The events of the great war prove, beyond peradventure, that in the wolf

struggle among the capitalist nations, no rules are respected and no

quarter given. Again and again the leaders among the allied

statesmen--particularly Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Wilson--appealed to the

German people over the heads of their masters with assurances that the

war was being fought against German autocracy, not against Germans.

"When will the German people throw off their yoke?" asked one Allied

diplomat. The answer came in November, 1918. A revolution was contrived,

the Kaiser fled the country, the autocracy was overthrown. Germans

ceased to fight with the understanding that Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points

should be made the foundation of the Peace. The armistice terms violated

the spirit if not the letter of the fourteen points; the Peace Treaty

scattered them to the winds. Under its provisions Germany was stripped

of her colonies; her investments in the allied possessions were

confiscated; her ships were taken; three-quarters of her iron ore and a

third of her coal supply were turned over to other powers; motor trucks,

locomotives, and other essential parts of her economic mechanism were

appropriated. Austria suffered an even worse fate, being "drawn and

quartered" in the fullest sense of the term. After stripping the

defeated enemies of all available booty, levying an indeterminate

indemnity, and dismembering the German and Austrian Empires, the Allies

established for thirty years a Reparation Commission, which is virtually

the economic dictator of Europe. Thus for a generation to come, the

economic life of the vanquished Empires will be under the active

supervision and control of the victors. Never did a farmer's wife pluck

a goose barer than the Allies plucked the Central Powers. (See the

Treaty, also "The Economic Consequences of the Peace," J. M. Keynes. New

York, Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920.)

Under the armistice terms and the Peace Treaty the Allies did to Germany

and Austria exactly what Germany and Austria would have done to France

and Great Britain had the war turned out differently. The Allied

statesmen talked much about democracy, but when their turn came they

plundered and despoiled with a practiced imperial hand. France and

Britain, as well as Germany and Austria, were capitalist Empires. The

Peace embodies the essential economic morality of capitalist

imperialism, the morality of "Eat or be eaten."

5. _The Capitalists and War_

The people and even the masters of America are inexperienced in this

international struggle. Among themselves they have experimented with

competitive industrialism on a national scale. Now, brought face to face

with the world struggle, many of them revolt against it. They deplore

the necessities that lead nations to make war on one another. They

supported the late war "to end war." They gave, suffered and sacrificed

with a keen, idealistic desire to "make the world safe for democracy."

They might as well have sought to scatter light and sunshine from a

cloudbank.

The masters of Europe, who have learned their trade in long years of

intrigue, diplomacy and war, feel no such repugnance. They play the

game. The American people are of the same race-stocks as the leading

contestants in the European struggle. They are not a whit less

ingenious, not a whit less courageous, not a whit less determined. When

practice has made them perfect they too will play the game just as well

as their European cousins and their play will count for more because of

the vast economic resources and surpluses which they possess.

American statesmen in the field of international diplomacy are like

babies, taking their first few steps. Later the steps come easier and

easier, until a child, who but a few months ago could not walk, has

learned to romp and sport about. The masters of the United States are

untrained in the arts of international intrigue. They showed their

inferiority in the most painful way during the negotiations over the

Paris Treaty. They are as yet unschooled in international trade, banking

and finance. They are also inexperienced in war, yet, having only raw

troops, and little or no equipment, within two years they made a notable

showing on the battlefields of Europe. Now they are busy learning their

financial lessons with an equal facility. A generation of contact with

world politics will bring to the fore diplomats capable of meeting

Europe's best on their own ground. What Europe has learned, America can

learn; what Europe has practiced, America can practice, and in the end

she may excel her teachers.

To-day economic forces are driving relentlessly. Surplus is accumulating

in a geometric ratio--surplus piling on surplus. This surplus must be

disposed of. While the remainder of the world--except Japan--is

staggering under intolerable burdens of debt and disorganization, the

United States emerges almost unscathed from the war, and prepares in

dead earnest to enter the international struggle,--to play at the master

game of "eat or be eaten."

Pride, ambition and love of gain and of power are pulling the American

plutocrats forward. The world seems to be within their grasp. If they

will reach out their hands they may possess it! They have assumed a

great responsibility. As good Americans worthy of the tradition of their

ancestors, they must see this thing through to the end! They must win,

or die in the attempt; and it is in this spirit that they are going

forward.

The American capitalists do not want war with Great Britain or with any

other country. They are not seeking war. They will regret war when it

comes.

War is expensive, troublesome and dangerous. The experiences of Europe

in the War of 1914 have taught some lessons. The leaders and thinkers

among the masters of America have visited Europe. They have seen the old

institutions destroyed, the old customs uprooted, the old faiths

overturned. They have seen the economic order in which they were vitally

concerned hurled to the earth and shattered. They have seen the red flag

of revolution wave where they had expected nothing but the banner of

victory. They have seen whole populations, weary of the old order, throw

it aside with an impatient gesture and bring a new order into being.

They have good reasons to understand and fear the disturbing influences

of war. They have felt them even in the United States--three thousand

miles away from the European conflict. How much more pressing might this

unrest be if the United States had fought all through the war, instead

of coming in when it was practically at an end!

Then there is always the danger of losing the war--and such a loss would

mean for the United States what it has meant for Germany--economic

slavery.

Presented with an opportunity to choose between the hazards of war and

the certainties of peace most of the capitalist interests in the United

States would without question choose peace. There are exceptions. The

manufacturers of munitions and of some of the implements and supplies

that are needed only for war purposes, undoubtedly have more to gain

through war than through peace, but they are only a small element in a

capitalist world which has more to gain through peace than through war.

But the capitalists cannot choose. They are embedded in an economic

system which has driven them--whether they liked it or not--along a path

of imperialism. Once having entered upon this path, they are compelled

to follow it into the sodden mire of international strife.

6. _The Imperial Task_

The American ruling class--the plutocracy--must plan to dominate the

earth; to exploit it, to exact tribute from it. Rome did as much for the

basin of the Mediterranean. Great Britain has done it for Africa and

Australia, for half of Asia, for four million square miles in North

America. If the people of one small island, poorly equipped with

resources, can achieve such a result, what may not the people of the

United States hope to accomplish?

That is the imperial task.

1. American economic life must be unified. Already much of this

work has been done.

2. The agencies for shaping public opinion must be secured. Little

has been left for accomplishment in this direction.

3. A martial, confident, restless, ambitious spirit must be

generated among the people. Such a result is being achieved by the

combination of economic and social forces that inhere in the

present social system.

4. The ruling class must be schooled in the art of rulership. The

next two generations will accomplish that result.

The American plutocracy must carry on. It must consolidate its gains and

move forward to greater achievements, with the goal clearly in mind and

the necessities of imperial power thoroughly mastered and understood.

XVII. THE NEW IMPERIAL ALIGNMENT

1. _A Survey of the Evidence_

Through the centuries empires have come and gone. In each age some

nation or people has emerged--stronger, better organized, more

aggressive, more powerful than its neighbors--and has conquered

territory, subjugated populations, and through its ruling class has

exploited the workers at home and abroad.

Europe has been for a thousand years the center of the imperial

struggle,--the struggle which called into being the militarism so hated

by the European peoples. It was from that struggle that millions fled to

America, where they hoped for liberty and peace.

The eighteenth century witnessed the rise of Great Britain to a position

of world authority. During the nineteenth century she held her place

against all rivals. With the assistance of Prussia, she overthrew

Napoleon at Waterloo. In the Crimean War and the Russo-Japanese War she

halted the power of the Czar. Half a century after Waterloo Germany,

under the leadership of Prussia won the Franco-Prussian War, and by that

act became the leading rival of the British Empire. Following the war,

which gave Germany control of the important resources included in Alsace

and Lorraine, there was a steady increase in her industrial efficiency;

the success of her trade was as pronounced as the success of her

industries, and by 1913 the Germans had a merchant fleet and a navy

second only to those of Great Britain.

Germany's economic successes, and her threat to build a railroad from

Berlin to Bagdad and tap the riches of the East, led the British to form

alliances with their traditional enemies--the French and the Russians.

Russia, after the breakdown of Czarism in 1917, dropped out of the

Entente, and the United States took her place among the Allies of the

British Empire. During the struggle France was reduced to a mere shell

of her former power. The War of 1914 bled her white, loaded her with

debt, disorganized her industries, demoralized her finances, and

although it restored to her important mineral resources, it left her too

weak and broken to take real advantage of them.

The War of 1914 decided the right of Great Britain to rule the Near East

as well as Southern Asia and the strategic points of Africa. In the

stripping of the vanquished and in the division of the spoils of war the

British lion proved to be the lion indeed. But the same forces that gave

the British the run of the Old World called into existence a rival in

the New.

People from Britain, Germany and the other countries of Northern Europe,

speaking the English language and fired with the conquering spirit of

the motherland, had been, for three centuries, taming the wilderness of

North America. They had found the task immense, but the rewards equally

great. When the forces of nature were once brought into subjection, and

the wilderness was inventoried, it proved to contain exactly those

stores that are needed for the success of modern civilization. With the

Indians brushed aside, and the Southwest conquered from Mexico, the new

ruling class of successful business men established itself, and the

matter of safeguarding property rights, of building industrial empires

and of laying up vast stores of capital and surplus followed as a matter

of course.

Europe, busy with her own affairs, paid little heed to the New World,

except to send to it some of her most rugged stock and much of her

surplus wealth. The New World, left to itself, pursued its way--in

isolation, and with an intensity proportioned to the size of the task in

hand and the richness of the reward.

The Spanish War in 1898 and the performance of the Canadians in the Boer

War of 1899 astounded the world, but it was the War of 1914 that really

waked the Europeans to the possibilities of the Western peoples. The

Canadians proved their worth to the British armies. The Americans showed

that they could produce prodigious amounts of the necessaries of war,

and when they did go in, they inaugurated a shipping program, raised and

dispatched troops, furnished supplies and provided funds to an extent

which, up to that time, was considered impossible. The years from 1914

to 1918 established the fact that there was, in the West, a colossus of

economic power.

2. _The New International Line-Up_

There are four major factors in the new international line-up. The first

is Russia; the second is the Japanese Empire; the third is the British

Empire and the fourth is the American Empire. Italy has neither the

resources, the wealth nor the population necessary to make her a factor

of large importance in the near future. France is too weak economically,

too overloaded with debt and too depleted in population to play a

leading role in world affairs.

The Russian menace is immediate. Bolshevism is not only the antithesis

of Capitalism but its mortal enemy. If Bolshevism persists and spreads

through Central Europe, India and China, capitalism will be wiped from

the earth.

A federation of Russia, the Baltic states, the new border provinces, and

the Central Empires on a socialist basis would give the socialist states

of central and northern Europe most of the European food area, a large

portion of the European raw material area and all of the technical skill

and machinery necessary to make a self-supporting economic unit. The two

hundred and fifty millions of people in Russia and Germany combined in

such a socialist federation would be as irresistible economically as

they would be from a military point of view.

Such a Central European federation, developing as it must along the

logical lines that lead into India and China would be the strongest

single unit in the world, viewed from the standpoint of resources, of

population, of productive power or of military strength. The only

possible rivals to such a combination would be the widely scattered

forces of the British Empire and the United States, separated from it by

the stretches of the Atlantic Ocean. Against such a grouping Japan would

be powerless because it would deprive her of the source of raw materials

upon which she must rely for her economic development. Great Britain

with her relatively small population and her rapidly diminishing

resources could make no head against such a combination even with the

assistance of her colonial empire. Northern India is as logical a home

for Bolshevism as Central China or South-eastern Russia. Connect

European Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Siberia, India and China with

bonds that make effective cooperation possible and these

countries--containing nearly two-thirds of the population of the world,

and possessed of the resources necessary to maintain a modern

civilization--could laugh at outside interference.

Two primary difficulties confront the organizers of the Federated

Socialist Republics of Europe and Asia. One is nationality, language,

custom and tradition, together with the ancient antagonisms which have

been so carefully nurtured through the centuries. The other is the

frightful economic disorganization prevalent throughout Central

Europe,--a disorganization which would be increased rather than

diminished by the establishment of new forms of economic life. Even if

such an organization were perfected, it must remain, for a long time to

come, on a defensive basis.

3. _The Yellow Peril_

The "yellow peril" thus far is little more than the Japanese menace to

British and American trade in the Far East. The Japanese Archipelago is

woefully deficient in coal, iron, petroleum, water power and

agricultural land. The country is over-populated and must depend for

its supplies of food and raw materials upon continental Asia. There

seems to be no probability that Japan and China can make any effective

working agreement in the near future that will constitute an active

menace to the supremacy of the white race. Alone Japan is too weak in

resources and too sparse in population. Combined with China she would be

formidable, but her military policy in Korea and in the Shantung

Province have made any effective cooperation with China at least

temporarily impossible.

Furthermore, the Japanese are not seeking world conquest. On the

contrary, they are bent upon maintaining their traditional aloofness by

having a Monroe Doctrine for the East. This doctrine will be summed up

in the phrase, "The East for the Easterners,"--the easterners being the

Japanese. Such a policy would prove a serious menace to the trade of the

United States and of Great Britain. It would prove still more of a

hindrance to the investment of American and British capital in the very

promising Eastern enterprises, and would close the door on the Western

efforts to develop the immense industrial resources of China. The recent

"Chinese Consortium," in which Japan joined with great reluctance,

suggests that the major capitalist powers have refused to recognize the

exclusive right of Japan to the economic advantages of the Far East. How

seriously this situation will be taken by the United States and Great

Britain depends in part upon the vigor with which Japan prosecutes her

claims and in part upon the preoccupation of these two great powers with

Bolshevism in Europe and with their own competitive activities in ship

building, trade, finance and armament.

4. _The British and the American Empires_

The two remaining major forces in world economics and politics are the

British Empire and the American Empire,--the mistress of the world, and

her latest rival in the competition for world power. Between them,

to-day, most of the world is divided. The British Empire includes the

Near East, Southern Asia, Africa, Australia and half of North America.

Dogging her are Germany, France, Russia and Italy, and, as she goes to

the Far East,--Japan. The United States holds the Western Hemisphere,

where she is supreme, with no enemy worthy the name.

The British power was shaken by the War of 1914. Never, in modern times,

had the British themselves, been compelled to do so much of the actual

fighting. The war debt and the disorganization of trade incident to the

war period proved serious factors in the curtailment of British economic

supremacy. At the same time, the territorial gains of the British were

enormous, particularly in the Near East.

The Americans secured real advantages from the war. They grew immensely

rich in profiteering during the first three years, they emerged with a

relatively small debt, with no great loss of life, and with the greatest

economic surpluses and the greatest immediate economic advantages

possessed by any nation of the world.

The British Empire was the acknowledged mistress of the world in 1913.

Her nearest rival (Germany) had one battleship to her two; one ton of

merchant shipping to her three, and two dollars of foreign investments

to her five. This rivalry was punished as the successive rivals of the

British Empire have been punished for three hundred years.

The war was won by the British Empire and her Allies, but in the hour of

victory a new rival appeared. By 1920 that rival had a naval program

which promised a fleet larger than the British fleet in 1924 or 1925;

within three years she had increased her merchant tonnage to two-thirds

of the British tonnage, and her foreign investments were three times the

foreign investments of Great Britain. This new rival was the American

Empire--whose immense economic strength constituted an immediate threat

to the world power of Great Britain.

5. _The Next Incident in the Great War_

Some nation, or some group of nations has always been in control of the

known world or else in active competition for the right to exercise such

a control. The present is an era of competition.

Capitalism has revolutionized the world's economic life. By 1875 the

capitalist nations were in a mad race to determine which one should

dominate the capitalist world and have first choice among the

undeveloped portions of the earth. The competitors were Great Britain,

Germany, France, Russia and Italy. Japan and the United States did not

really enter the field for another generation.

The War of 1914 decided this much:--that France and Italy were too weak

to play the big game in a big way, that Germany could not compete

effectively for some time to come; that the Russians would no longer

play the old game at all. There remained Japan, Great Britain and the

United States and it is among these three nations that the capitalist

world is now divided. Japan is in control of the Far East. Great Britain

holds the Near East, Africa and Australia; the United States dominates

the Western Hemisphere.

The Great War began in 1914. It will end when the question is decided as

to which of these three empires will control the Earth.

Great Britain has been the dominant factor in the world for a century.

She gained her position after a terrific struggle, and she has

maintained it by vanquishing Holland, Spain, France and Germany.

The United States is out to capture the economic supremacy of the earth.

Her business men say so frankly. Her politicians fear that their

constituents are not as yet ready to take such a step. They have been

reassured, however, by the presidential vote of November, 1920.

American business life already is imperial, and political sentiment is

moving rapidly in the same direction.

Great Britain holds title to the pickings of the world. America wants

some or all of them. The two countries are headed straight for a

conflict, which is as inevitable as morning sunrise, unless the menace

of Bolshevism grows so strong, and remains so threatening that the great

capitalist rivals will be compelled to join forces for the salvation of

capitalist society.

As economic rivalries increase, competition in military and naval

preparation will come as a matter of course. Following these will be the

efforts to make political alliances--in the East and elsewhere.

These two countries are old time enemies. The roots of that enmity lie

deep. Two wars, the white hot feeling during the Civil War, the

anti-British propaganda, carried, within a few years, through the

American schools, the traditions among the officers in the American

navy, the presence of 1,352,251 Irish born persons in the United States

(1910), the immense plunder seized by the British during the War of

1914,--these and many other factors will make it easy to whip the

American people into a war-frenzy against the British Empire.

Were there no economic rivalries, such antagonisms might slumber for

decades, but with the economic struggle so active, these other matters

will be kept continually in the foreground.

The capitalists of Great Britain have faced dark days and have

surmounted huge obstacles. They are not to be turned back by the threat

of rivalry. The American capitalists are backed by the greatest

available surpluses in the world; they are ambitious, full of enthusiasm

and energy, they are flushed with their recent victory in the world war,

and overwhelmed by the unexpected stores of wealth that have come to

them as a result of the conflict. They are imbued with a boundless faith

in the possibilities of their country. Neither Great Britain nor the

United States is in a frame of mind to make concessions. Each is

confident--the British with the traditional confidence of centuries of

world leadership; the Americans with the buoyant, idealistic confidence

of youth. It is one against the other until the future supremacy of the

world is decided.

6. _The Imperial Task_

American business interests are engaged in the work of building an

international business structure. American industry, directed from the

United States, exploiting foreign resources for American profit, and

financed by American institutions, is gaining a footing in Latin

America, in Europe and Asia.

The business men of Rome built such a structure two thousand years ago.

They competed with and finally crushed their rivals in Tyre, Corinth and

Carthage. In the early days of the Empire, they were the economic

masters, as well as the political masters of the known world.

Within two centuries the business men of Great Britain have built an

international business structure that has known no equal since the days

of the Caesars. Perhaps it is greater, even, than the economic empire of

the Romans. At any rate, for a century that British empire of commerce

and industry has gone unchallenged, save by Germany. Germany has been

crushed. But there is an industrial empire rising in the West. It is

new. Its strength is as yet undetermined. It is uncoordinated. A new era

has dawned, however, and the business men of the United States have made

up their minds to win the economic supremacy of the earth.

Already the war is on between Great Britain and the United States. The

two countries are just as much at war to-day as Great Britain and

Germany were at war during the twenty years that preceded 1914. The

issues are essentially the same in both cases,--commercial and economic

in character, and it is these economic and commercial issues that are

the chief causes of modern military wars--that are in themselves

economic wars which may at any moment be transferred to the military

arena.

British capitalists are jealously guarding the privileges that they have

collected through centuries of business and military conflict. The

American capitalists are out to secure these privileges for themselves.

On neither side would a military settlement of the issue be welcomed. On

both sides it would be regarded as a painful necessity. War is an

incident in imperialist policy. Yet the position of the imperialist as

an international exploiter depends upon his ability to make war

successfully. War is a part of the price that the imperialist must pay

for his opportunity to exploit and control the earth.

After Sedan, it was Germany versus Great Britain for the control of

Europe. After Versailles it is the United States versus Great Britain

for the control of the capitalist earth. Both nations must spend the

next few years in active preparation for the conflict.

The governments of Great Britain and the United States are to-day on

terms of greatest intimacy. Soon an issue will arise--perhaps over

Mexico, perhaps over Persia, perhaps over Ireland, perhaps over the

extension of American control in the Caribbean. There is no difficulty

of finding a pretext.

Then there will follow the time-honored method of arousing the people on

either side to wrath against those across the border. Great Britain will

point to the race-riots and negro-lynchings in America as a proof that

the people of the United States are barbarians. British editors will

cite the wanton taking of the Canal Zone as an indication of the

willingness of American statesmen to go to any lengths in their effort

to extend their dominion over the earth. The newspapers of the United

States will play up the terrorism and suppression in Ireland and there

are many Irishmen more than ready to lend a hand in such an enterprise;

tyranny in India will come in for a generous share of comment; then

there are the relations between Great Britain and the Turks, and above

all, there are the evidences in the Paris Treaty of the way in which

Great Britain is gradually absorbing the earth. Unless the power of

labor is strong enough to turn the blow, or unless the capitalists

decide that the safety of the capitalist world depends upon their

getting together and dividing the plunder, the result is inevitable.

The United States is a world Empire in her own right. She dominates the

Western Hemisphere. Young and inexperienced, she nevertheless possesses

the economic advantages and political authority that give her a voice in

all international controversies. Only twenty years have passed since the

organizing genius of America turned its attention from exclusively

domestic problems to the problems of financial imperialism that have

been agitating Europe for a half a century. The Great War showed that

American men make good soldiers, and it also showed that American wealth

commands world power.

With the aid of Russia, France, Japan and the United States Great

Britain crushed her most dangerous rival--Germany. The struggle which

destroyed Germany's economic and military power erected in her stead a

more menacing economic and military power--the United States. Untrained

and inexperienced in world affairs, the master class of the United

States has been placed suddenly in the title role. America over night

has become a world empire and over night her rulers have been called

upon to think and act like world emperors. Partly they succeeded, partly

they bungled, but they learned much. Their appetites were whetted, their

imaginations stirred by the vision of world authority. To-day they are

talking and writing, to-morrow they will act--no longer as novices, but

as masters of the ruling class in a nation which feels herself destined

to rule the earth.

The imperial struggle is to continue. The Japanese Empire dominates the

Far East; the British Empire dominates Southern Asia, the Near East,

Africa and Australia; the American Empire dominates the Western

Hemisphere. It is impossible for these three great empires to remain in

rivalry and at peace. Economic struggle is a form of war, and the

economic struggle between them is now in progress.

7. _Continuing the Imperial Struggle_

The War of 1914 was no war for democracy in spite of the fact that

millions of the men who died in the trenches believed that they were

fighting for freedom. Rather it was a war to make the world safe for the

British Empire. Only in part was the war successful. The old world was

made safe by the elimination of Britain's two dangerous rivals--Germany

and Russia; but out of the conflict emerged a new rival--unexpectedly

strong, well equipped and eager for the conflict.

The war did not destroy imperialism. It was fought between five great

empires to determine which one should be supreme. In its result, it gave

to Great Britain rather than to Germany the right to exploit the

undeveloped portions of Asia and of Africa.

The Peace--under the form of "mandates"--makes the process of

exploitation easier and more legal than it ever has been in the past.

The guarantees of territorial integrity, under the League Covenant, do

more than has ever been done heretofore to preserve for the imperial

masters of the earth their imperial prerogatives.

New names are being used but it is the old struggle. Egypt and India

helped to win the war, and by that very process, they fastened the

shackles of servitude more firmly upon their own hands and feet. The

imperialists of the world never had less intention than they have to-day

of quitting the game of empire building. Quite the contrary--a wholly

new group of empire builders has been quickened into life by the

experiences of the past five years.

The present struggle for the possession of the oil fields of the world

is typical of the economic conflicts that are involved in imperial

struggles. For years the capitalists of the great investing nations

have been fighting to control the oil fields of Mexico. They have hired

brigands, bought governors, corrupted executives. The war settled the

Mexican question in favor of the United States. Mexico, considered

internationally, is to-day a province of the American Empire.

During the blackest days of the war, when Paris seemed doomed, the

British divided their forces. One army was operating across the deserts

of the Near East. For what purpose? When the Peace was signed, Great

Britain held two vantage points--the oil fields of the Near East and the

road from Berlin to Bagdad.

The late war was not a war to end war, nor was it a war for disarmament.

German militarism is not destroyed; the appropriations for military and

naval purposes, made by the great nations during the last two years, are

greater than they have ever been in any peace years that are known to

history.

The world is preparing for war to-day as actively as it was in the years

preceding the War of 1914. The years from 1914 to 1918 were the opening

episodes; the first engagements of the Great War.

There is no question, among those who have taken the trouble to inform

themselves, but that the War of 1914 was fought for economic and

commercial advantage. The same rivalries that preceded 1914 are more

active in the world to-day than ever before. Hence the possibilities of

war are greater by exactly that amount. The imperial struggle is being

continued and a part of the imperial struggle is war.

8. _Again!_

This monstrous thing called war will occur again! Not because any

considerable number of people want it, not even because an active

minority wills it, but because the present system of competitive

capitalism makes war inevitable. Economic rivalries are the basis of

modern wars and economic rivalries are the warp and woof of capitalism.

To-day the rivalries are economic--in the fields of commerce and

industry and finance. To-morrow they will be military.

Already the nations have begun the competition in the building of tanks,

battleships and airplanes. These instruments of destruction are built

for use, and when the time comes, they will be used as they were between

1914 and 1918.

Again there will be the war propaganda--subtle at first, then more and

more open. There will be stories of atrocities; threats of world

conquest. "Preparedness" will be the cry.

Again there will be the talk of "My country, right or wrong"; "Stand

behind the President"; "Fall in line"; "Go over the top!"

Again fear will stalk through the land, while hate and war lust are

whipped into a frenzy.

Again there will be conscription, and the straightest and strongest of

the young men will leave their homes and join the colors.

Again the most stalwart men of the nations will "dig themselves in" and

slaughter one another for years on end.

Again the truth-tellers will be mobbed and jailed and lynched, while

those who champion the cause of the workers will be served with

injunctions if they refuse to sell out to the masters.

Again the profiteers will stop at home and reap their harvests out of

the agony and the blood of the nation.

Again, when the killing is over, a few old men, sitting around a table,

will carve the world--stripping the vanquished while they reward the

victors.

Again the preparations will begin for the next war. The people will be

fed on promises, phrases and lies. They will pay and they will die for

the benefit of their masters, and thus the terrible tragedy of

imperialism will continue to bathe the world in tears and in blood.

XVIII. THE CHALLENGE TO IMPERIALISM

1. _Revolutionary Protest_

Since the Franco-Prussian War the people of Europe have been waking up

to the failure of imperialism. The period has been marked by a rapid

growth of Socialism on the continent and of trade-unionism in Great

Britain. Both movements are expressions of an increasing working-class

solidarity; both voice the sentiments of internationalism that were

sounded so loudly during the revolutionary period of the eighteenth

century.

The rapid growth of the European labor movement worried the autocrats

and imperialists. Bismarck suppressed it; the Russian police tortured

it. Despite all of the efforts to check it or to crush it, the

revolutionary movement in Europe gained force. The speeches and writings

of the leaders were directed against the capitalist system, and the rank

and file of the workers, rendered sharply class conscious by the

traditions of class rule, responded to the appeal by organizing new

forms of protest.

The first revolutionary wave of the twentieth century broke in Russia in

1905. The Russian Revolution of 1917 destroyed the old regime and

replaced it first by a moderate or liberal and then by a radical

communist control. Like all of the proletarian movements in Europe the

Russian revolutionary movement was directed against "capitalism" and

"imperialism" and despite the fact that there was no considerable

development of the capitalist system in Russia, its imperial

organization was so thoroughgoing, and the imperial attitude toward the

working class had been so brutally revealed during the revolutionary

demonstrations in 1905, that the people reacted with a true Slavic

intensity against the despotism that they knew, which was that of an

autocratic, feudal master-class.

The international doctrines of the new Russian regime were expressed in

the phrase "no forcible annexations, no punitive indemnities, the free

development of all peoples." The keynote of its internal policy is

contained in Section 16 of the Russian Constitution, which makes work

the duty of every citizen of the Republic and proclaims as the motto of

the new government the doctrine, "He that will not work neither shall he

eat." The franchise is restricted. Only workers (including housekeepers)

are permitted to vote. Profiteers and exploiters are specifically denied

the right to vote or to hold office. Resources are nationalized together

with the financial and industrial machinery of Russia. The Bill of

Rights contained in the first section of the Russian Constitution is a

pronouncement in favor of the liberty of the workers from every form of

exploitation and economic oppression.

The Russian revolution was directed against capitalism in Russia and

against imperialism everywhere. This dramatic assault upon capitalist

imperialism centered the eyes of the world upon Russia, making her

experiment the outstanding feature of a period during which the workers

were striving to realize the possibilities of a more abundant life for

the masses of mankind.

2. _Outlawing Bolshevism_

Capitalist diplomats were wary of the Kerensky regime because they did

not feel certain how far the Russian people intended to go. The triumph

of the Bolsheviki made the issue unmistakably clear. There could be no

peace between Bolshevism and capitalism. From that day forward it was a

struggle to determine which of the two economic systems should survive.

During the years 1918 and 1919 the capitalist world organized one of the

most effective advertising campaigns that has ever been staged. Every

shred of evidence that, by any stretch of the imagination, could be

distorted into an attack upon the Bolshevist regime, was scattered

broadcast over the world. Where evidence was lacking, rumor and

innuendo were employed. The leading newspapers and magazines, prominent

statesmen, educators, clergymen, scientists and public men in every walk

of life went out of their way to denounce the Russian experiment in very

much the same manner that the propertied interests of Europe had

denounced the French experiment during the years that followed 1789.

All of the great imperialist governments had at their disposal a vast

machinery for the purveying of information--false or true as the case

might demand. This public machinery like the machinery of private

capitalism was turned against Bolshevism. The capitalist governments

went farther by backing with money and supplies the counter

revolutionary forces under Yudenich, Denekine, Seminoff, and Kolchak.

Allied expeditions were landed on the soil of European and Asiatic

Russia "to free the Russian people from the clutches of the Bolsheviki."

A blockade was declared in which the Germans were invited to join (after

the signing of the armistice), and the whole capitalist world united to

starve into submission the men, women and children of revolutionary

Russia.

No event of recent times, not even the holy war against the autocracy of

militarist Germany, had created such a unanimity of action among the

Western nations. Bolshevism threatened the very existence of capitalism

and as such its destruction became the first task of the capitalist

world.

The collapse of the capitalist efforts to destroy socialist Russia

reflects the power of a new idea over the ancient form. The Allied

expeditions into Russia met with hostility instead of welcome. The

counter-revolutionary forces were overwhelmed by the red army. The

buffer states made peace. The Allied soldiers mutinied when called upon

to take part in a war against the forces of revolutionary Russia. "Holy

Russia" became holy Russia indeed--recognized and respected by the

proletarian forces throughout Europe.

3. _The New Europe_

Russia is the dramatic center of the European movement against

capitalist imperialism, but the movement is not confined to Russia. Its

activities are extended into every important country on the continent.

Since March, 1917, when the first revolution occurred in Russia,

absolute monarchy and divine, kingly rights have practically disappeared

from Europe. Before the Russian Revolution, four-fifths of the people of

Europe were under the sway of monarchs who exercised dictatorial power

over the domestic and foreign affairs of their respective nations.

Within two years, the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs

were driven from the thrones of Germany, of Austria and of Russia. Other

rulers of lesser importance followed in their wake, until to-day, the

old feudal power that held the political control over most of Europe in

1914 has practically disappeared.

This is the obvious thing--a revolution in the form of political

government--the kind of revolution with which history usually deals.

But there is another revolution proceeding in Europe, far more important

because more fundamental--the economic and social revolution; the change

in the form of breadwinning; the change in the relation between a man

and the tools that he uses to earn his livelihood.

Every one knows, now, that Czars and Kaisers and Emperors did not really

control Europe before 1914, except in so far as they yielded to bankers

and to business men. The crown and the scepter gave the appearance of

power, but behind them were concessions, monopolies, economic

preferments, and special privilege. The European revolution that began

in 1917 with the Czar, did not stop with kings. It began with them

because they were in such plain sight, but when it had finished with

them it went right on to the bankers and the business men.

War is destruction, organized and directed by the best brains

available. It is merry sport for the organizers and for some of the

directors, but like any other destructive agent, it may get out of hand.

The War of 1914 was to last for six weeks. It dragged on for five years,

and the wars that have grown out of it are still continuing. In the

course of those five years, the war destroyed the capitalist system of

continental Europe. Patches and shreds of it remained, but they were

like the topless, shattered trees on the scarred battle-fields. They

were remnants--nothing more. In the first place, the war destroyed the

confidence of the people in the capitalist system; in the second place,

it smashed up the political machinery of capitalism; in the third place,

it weakened or destroyed the economic machinery of capitalism.

Each government, to win the war, lied to its people. They were told that

their country was invaded. They were assured that the war would be a

short affair. Besides that, there were various reasons given for the

struggle--it was a war to end war; it was a war to break the iron ring

that was crushing a people; it was a war for liberty; it was a struggle

to make the world safe for democracy.

Not a single important promise of the war was fulfilled, save only the

promise of victory. Hundreds of millions, aroused to the heights of an

exalted idealism, came back to earth only to find themselves betrayed.

With less promise and more fulfillment; with at least an appearance of

statesmanship; with some respect for the simple moralities of

truth-telling, fair-dealing, and common honor, there might have been

some chance for the capitalist system to retain the confidence of the

peoples of war-torn Europe, even in the face of the Russian Revolution;

but each of these things was lacking, and as one worker put it: "I don't

know what Bolshevism is, but it couldn't be any worse than what we have

now, so I'm for it!"

Such a loss of public confidence would have proved a serious blow to any

social system, even were it capable of immediately reestablishing normal

conditions of living among the people. In this case, the same events

that destroyed public confidence in the capitalist system, destroyed the

system itself.

The old political forms of Europe--the czars, emperors and kaisers, who

stood as the visible symbols of established order and civilization, were

overthrown during the war. The economic forces--the banks and business

men--had used these forms for the promotion of their business

enterprises. Capitalism depended on czars and kaisers as a blacksmith

depends on his hammer. They were among the tools with which business

forged the chains of its power. They were the political side of the

capitalist system. While the people accepted them and believed in them,

the business interests were able to use these political tools at will.

The tools were destroyed in the fierce pressure of war and revolution,

and with them went one of the chief assets of the European capitalists.

There was a third breakdown--far more important than the break in the

political machinery of the capitalist system--and that was the

annihilation of the old economic life.

Economic life is, in its elements, very simple. Raw materials--iron ore,

copper, cotton, petroleum, coal and wheat--are converted, by some

process of labor, into things that feed, clothe and house people. There

are four stages in this process--raw materials; manufacturing;

transportation; marketing. If there is a failure in one of the four, all

of the rest go wrong, as is very clearly illustrated whenever there is a

great miners' or railroad workers' strike, or when there is a failure of

a particular crop. During the war, all four of these economic stages

went wrong.

Between the years 1914 and 1918 the people of Europe busied themselves

with a war that put their economic machine out of the running.

For a hundred years the European nations had been busy building a finely

adjusted economic mechanism; population, finance, commerce--all were

knit into the same system. This system the war demolished, and the years

that have followed the Armistice have not seen it rebuilt in any

essential particular, save in Great Britain and in some of the neutral

countries.

Not only were the European nations unable to give commodities in

exchange for the things they needed but the machinery of finance, by

means of which these transactions were formerly facilitated, was

crippled almost beyond repair. Under the old system buying and selling

were carried on by the use of money, and money ceased to be a stable

medium of exchange in Europe. It would be more correct to say that money

was no longer taken seriously in many parts of Europe. During the war

the European governments printed 75 billions of dollars' worth of paper

money. This paper depreciated to a ridiculous extent. Before the war,

the franc, the lira, the mark and the crown had about the same value--20

to 23 cents, or about five to a dollar. By 1920 the dollar bought 15

francs; 23 liras; 40 marks, and 250 Austrian crowns. In some of the

ready-made countries, constituted under the Treaty or set up by the

Allies as a cordon about Russia, hundreds and thousands of crowns could

be had for a dollar. Even the pound sterling, which kept its value

better than the money of any of the other European combatants, was

thirty per cent. below par, when measured in terms of dollars. This

situation made it impossible for the nations whose money was at such a

heavy discount to purchase supplies from the more fortunate countries.

But to make matters even worse, the rate of exchange fluctuated from day

to day and from hour to hour so that business transactions could only be

negotiated on an immense margin of safety.

Add to this financial dissolution the mountains of debt, the huge

interest charges and the oppressive taxes, and the picture of economic

ruin is complete.

The old capitalist world, organized on the theory of competition between

the business men within each nation, and between the business men of one

nation and those of another nation, reached a point where it would no

longer work.

In Russia the old system had disappeared, and a new system had been set

up in its place. In Germany, and throughout central Europe, the old

system was shattered, and the new had not yet emerged. In France, Italy

and Great Britain the old system was in process of disintegration--rapid

in France and Italy; slower in Great Britain. But in all of these

countries intelligent men and women were asking the only question that

statesmanship could ask--the question, "What next?"

The capitalist system was stronger in Great Britain than in any of the

other warring countries of Europe. Before the war, it rested on a surer

foundation. During the war, it withstood better than any other the

financial and industrial demands. Since the war, it has made the best

recovery.

Great Britain is the most successful of the capitalist states. The other

capitalist nations of Europe regard her as the inner citadel of European

capitalism. The British Labor Movement is seeking to take this citadel

from within.

The British Labor Movement is a formidable affair. There are not more

than a hundred thousand members in all of the Socialist parties, in the

Independent Labor Party and in the Communist Party combined. There are

between six and seven millions of members in the trade unions.

Perhaps the best test of the strength of the British Labor Movement came

in the summer of 1920, over the prospective war with Russia. Warsaw was

threatened. Its fall seemed imminent, and both Millerand and

Lloyd-George made it clear that the fall of Warsaw meant war. The

situation developed with extraordinary rapidity. It was reported that

the British Government had dispatched an ultimatum. The Labor Movement

acted with a strength and precision that swept the Government off its

feet and compelled an immediate reversal of policy.

Over night, the workers of Great Britain were united in the Council of

Action. As originally constituted, the "Labor and Russia Council of

Action" consisted of five representatives each from the Parliamentary

Committee of the Trades Union Congress, the Executive Committee of the

Labor Party and the Parliamentary Labor Party. To these fifteen were

added eight others, among whom were representatives of every element in

the British Labor Movement. This Council of Action did three things--it

notified the Government that there must be no war with Russia; it

organized meetings and demonstrations in every corner of the United

Kingdom to formulate public opinion; it began the organization of local

councils of action, of which there were three hundred within four weeks.

The Council of Action also called a special conference of the British

Labor Movement which met in London on August 13. There were over a

thousand delegates at this conference, which opened and closed with the

singing of the "Internationale." When the principal resolution of

endorsement was passed, approving the formation of the Council of

Action, the delegates rose to their feet, cheered the move to the echo,

and sang the "Internationale" and "The Red Flag." The closing resolution

authorized the Council of Action to take "any steps that may be

necessary to give effect to the decisions of the Conference and the

declared policy of the Trade Union and Labor Movement."

Such was the position in the "Citadel of European Capitalism." The

Government was forced to deal with a body that, for all practical

purposes, was determining the foreign policy of the Empire. Behind that

Council was an organized group of between six and seven millions of

workers who were out to get the control of industry into their own

hands, and to do it as speedily and as effectually as circumstances

would permit.

Meanwhile, the mantle of revolutionary activity descended upon Italy,

where the red flag was run up over some the largest factories and some

of the finest estates.

Throughout the war, the revolutionary movement was strong in Italy. The

Socialist Party remained consistently an anti-war party, with a radical

and vigorous propaganda. The Armistice found the Socialist and Labor

Movements strong in the North, with a growing movement in the South for

the organization of Agricultural Leagues.

The Socialist propaganda in Italy was very consistent and telling. The

paper "Avanti," circulating in all parts of the country, was an agency

of immense importance. The war, the Treaty, the rising cost of living,

the growing taxation--all had prepared the ground for the work that the

propagandists were doing. Their message was: "Make ready for the taking

over of the industries! Learn what you can, so that, when the day comes,

each will play his part. When you get the word, take over the works!

There must be no violence--that only helps the other side. Do not linger

on the streets, you will be shot. Remain at home or stay in the

factories and work as you never worked before!"

That, in essence, was the Italian Socialist propaganda--simple, clear

and direct, and that was, in effect, what the workers did.

The returned soldiers were a factor of large importance in the Italian

Revolution. They were radicals throughout the war. The peace made them

revolutionists. "The Proletarian League of the Great War" was affiliated

with "The International of Former Soldiers," which comprised the radical

elements among the ex-service men of Great Britain, Germany, France,

Austria, Italy and a number of the smaller countries. There were over a

million dues-paying members in this International, and their avowed

object was propaganda against war and in favor of an economic system in

which the workers control the industries. It was this group in

Italy--particularly in the South--that carried through the project of

occupying the estates.

The workers are in control of the whole social fabric in Russia where

the revolution has gone the farthest. In Great Britain, where the labor

movement is perhaps more conservative than in any of the other countries

of Europe, the Government is compelled to deal with a labor movement

that is strong enough to consider and to decide important matters of

foreign policy. The workers of Italy have the upper hand. In

Czecho-Slovakia, in Bulgaria, in Germany and in the smaller and neutral

countries the workers are making their voices heard in opposition to any

restoration of the capitalist system; while they busy themselves with

the task of creating the framework of a new society.

4. _The Challenge_

This is the challenge of the workers of Europe to the capitalist system.

The workers are not satisfied; they are questioning. They mean to have

the best that life has to give, and they are convinced that the

capitalist system has denied it to them.

The world has had more than a century of capitalism. The workers have

had ample opportunity to see the system at work. The people of all the

great capitalist countries--the common people--have borne the burdens

and felt the crushing weight of capitalism--in its enslavement of little

children; in its underpaying of women; in long hours of unremitting,

monotonous toil; in the dreadful housing; in the starvation wages; in

unemployment; in misery. The capitalist system has had a trial and it is

upon the workers that the system has been tried out.

During this experiment, the workers of the world have been compelled to

accept poverty, unemployment and war.

These terrible scourges have afflicted the capitalist world, and it is

the workers and their families that have borne them in their own

persons. In those countries where the capitalist system is the oldest,

the workers have suffered the longest. The essence of capitalism is the

exploitation of one man by another man, and the longer this exploitation

is practiced the more skillful and effective does the master class

become in its manipulation.

The workers look before them along the path of capitalist imperialism

that is now being followed by the nations that are in the lead of the

capitalist world. There they see no promise save the same exploitation,

the same poverty, the same inequality and the same wars over the

commercial rivalries of the imperial nations.

The workers of Europe have come to the conclusion that the world should

belong to those who build it; that the good things of life should be the

property of those who produce them. They see only one course open before

them--to declare that those who will not work, shall not eat.

The right of self-determination is the international expression of this

challenge. The ownership of the job is its industrial equivalent.

Together, the two ideas comprise the program of the more advanced

workers in all of the great imperial countries of the world. These ideas

did not originate in Russia, and they are not confined to Russia any

more than capitalism is confined to Great Britain. They are the

doctrines of the new order that is coming rapidly into its own.

Capitalism has been summed up, heretofore, in the one word "profit." The

capitalist cannot abandon that standard. The world has lived beyond it,

however, and without it, capitalism, as a system, is meaningless. If the

capitalists abandon profit, they abandon capitalism.

Without profit the capitalist system falls to pieces, because it is the

profit incentive that has always been considered as the binder that

holds the capitalist world together. Hence the abandonment of the profit

incentive is the surrender of the citadel of capitalism. While profit

remains, exploitation persists, and while there is exploitation of one

man by another, no human being can call himself free.

The capitalists are caught in a beleaguered fortress in which they are

defending their economic lives. Profit is the key to this fortress, and

if they surrender the key, they are lost.

5. _The Real Struggle_

This is the real struggle for the possession of the earth. Shall the few

own and the many labor for the few, or the many own, and labor upon jobs

that they themselves possess? The struggle between the capitalist

nations is incidental. The struggle between the owners of the world and

the workers of the world is fundamental.

If Great Britain wins in her conflict with the United States, her

capitalists will continue to exploit the workers of Lancashire and

Delhi. Her imperialists will continue their policy of world domination,

subjugating peoples and utilizing their resources and their labor for

the enrichment.

If the United States wins in her struggle with Great of the bankers and

traders of London. Britain, her capitalists will continue to exploit the

workers of Pittsburg and San Juan. Her imperialists will continue their

policy of world domination, subjugating the peoples of Latin American

first, and then reaching out for the control over other parts of the

earth.

No matter what imperial nation may triumph in this struggle between the

great nations for the right to exploit the weaker peoples and the choice

resources, the struggle between capitalism and Socialism must be fought

to a finish. If the capitalists win, the world will see the introduction

of a new form of serfdom, more complete and more effective than the

serfdom of Feudal Europe. If the Socialists win, the world enters upon a

new cycle of development.

XIX. THE AMERICAN WORKER AND WORLD EMPIRE

1. _Gains and Losses_

The American worker is a citizen of the richest country of the world.

Resources are abundant. There is ample machinery to convert these gifts

of nature into the things that men need for their food and clothing,

their shelter, their education and their recreation. There is enough for

all, and to spare, in the United States.

But the American worker is not master of his own destinies. He must go

to the owners of American capital--to the plutocrats--and from them he

must secure the permission to earn a living; he must get a job.

Therefore it is the capitalists and not the workers of the United States

that are deciding its public policy at the present moment.

The American capitalist is a member of one of the most powerful

exploiting groups in the world. Behind him are the resources, productive

machinery and surplus of the American Empire. Before him are the

undeveloped resources of the backward countries. He has gained wealth

and power by exploitation at home. He is destined to grow still richer

and more powerful as he extends his organization for the purposes of

exploitation abroad.

The prospects of world empire are as alluring to the American capitalist

as have been similar prospects to other exploiting classes throughout

history. Empire has always been meat and drink to the rulers.

The master class has much to gain through imperialism. The workers have

even more to lose.

The workers make up the great bulk of the American people. Fully

seven-eighths (perhaps nine-tenths) of the adult inhabitants of the

United States are wage earners, clerks and working farmers. All of the

proprietors, officials, managers, directors, merchants (big and little),

lawyers, doctors, preachers, teachers, and the remainder of the business

and professional classes constitute not over 10 or 12 percent of the

total adult population. The workers are the "plain people" who do not

build empires any more than they make wars. If they were left to

themselves, they would continue the pursuit of their daily affairs which

takes most of their thought and energy--and be content to let their

neighbors alone.

2. _The Workers' Business_

The mere fact that the workers are so busy with the routine of daily

life is in itself a guarantee that they will mind their own business.

The average worker is engaged, outside of working hours, with the duties

of a family. His wife, if she has children, is thus employed for the

greater portion of her time. Both are far too preoccupied to interfere

with the like acts of other workers in some other portion of the world.

Furthermore, their preoccupation with these necessary tasks gives them

sympathy with those similarly at work elsewhere.

The plain people of any country are ready to exercise even more than an

ordinary amount of forbearance and patience rather than to be involved

in warfare, which wipes out in a fortnight the advantages gained through

years of patient industry.

The workers have no more to gain from empire building than they have

from war making, but they pay the price of both. Empire building and war

making are Siamese twins. They are so intimately bound together that

they cannot live apart. The empire builder--engaged in conquering and

appropriating territory and in subjugating peoples--must have not only

the force necessary to set up the empire, but also the force requisite

to maintain it. Battleships and army corps are as essential to empires

as mortar is to a brick wall. They are the expression of the organized

might by which the empire is held together.

The plain people are the bricks which the imperial class uses to build

into a wall about the empire. They are the mortar also, for they man the

ships and fill up the gaps in the infantry ranks and the losses in the

machine gun corps. They are the body of the empire as the rulers are its

guiding spirit.

When ships are required to carry the surplus wealth of the ruling class

into foreign markets, the workers build them. When surplus is needed to

be utilized in taking advantage of some particularly attractive

investment opportunity the workers create it. They lay down the keels of

the fighting ships, and their sons aim and fire the guns. They are

drafted into the army in time of war and their bodies are fed to the

cannon which other workers in other countries, or perhaps in the same

country, have made for just such purposes. The workers are the warp and

woof of empire, yet they are not the gainers by it. Quite the contrary,

they are merely the means by which their masters extend their dominion

over other workers who have not yet been scientifically exploited.

The work of empire building falls to the lot of the workers. The profits

of empire building go to the exploiting class.

3. _The British Workers_

What advantage came to the workers of Rome from the Empire which their

hands shaped and which their blood cemented together? Their masters took

their farms, converted the small fields into great, slave-worked

estates, and drove the husbandmen into the alleys and tenements of the

city where they might eke out an existence as best they could. The

rank-and-file Roman derived the same advantage from the Roman Empire

that the rank-and-file Briton has derived from the British Empire.

Great Britain has exercised more world mastery during the past hundred

years than any other nation. All that Germany hoped to achieve Great

Britain has realized. Her traders carry the world's commerce, her

financiers clip profits from international business transactions, her

manufacturers sell to the people of every country, the sun never sets on

the British flag.

Great Britain is the foremost exponent and practitioner of capitalist

imperialism. The British Empire is the greatest that the world has known

since the Empire of Rome fell to pieces. Whatever benefits modern

imperialism brings either for capitalists or for workers should be

enjoyed by the capitalists and workers of Great Britain.

Until the Great World War the capitalists of Great Britain were the most

powerful on earth with a larger foreign trade and a larger foreign

investment than any other. At the same time the British workers were

amongst the worst exploited of those in any capitalist country in

Europe.

The entire nineteenth century is one long and terrible record of

master-class exploitation inside the British Isles. The miseries of

modern India have been paralleled in the lives of the workers of

Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. Gibbins, in his description of the

conditions of the child workers in the early years of the nineteenth

century ends with the remark, "One dares not trust oneself to try and

set down calmly all that might be told of this awful page of the history

of industrial England."[58]

Even more revolting are the descriptions of the conditions which

surrounded the lives of the mine workers in the early part of the

nineteenth century. Women as well as men were taken into the mines and

in some cases, as the reports of the Parliamentary investigation show,

the women dragged cars through passage-ways that were too low to admit

the use of ponies or mules.

England, mistress of the seas, proud carrier of the traffic of the

world, the center of international finance, the richest among all the

investing nations--England was reeking with poverty. Beside her

factories and warehouses were vile slums in which people huddled as

Ruskin said, "so many brace to a garret." There in the back alleys of

civilization babies were born and babies died, while those who survived

grew to the impotent manhood of the street hooligan.

The British Empire girdled the world. For a century its power had grown,

practically unchallenged. Superficially it had every appearance of

strength and permanence but behind it and beneath it were the hundreds

of thousands of exploited factory workers, the underpaid miners, the

Cannon Gate of Edinburgh and the Waterloo Junction of London.

Capitalist imperialism has not benefited the British workers. Quite the

contrary, the rise of the Empire has been accompanied by the

disappearance of the stalwart English yeoman; by the disappearance of

the agricultural population; by the concentration of the people in huge

industrial towns where the workers, no longer the masters of their own

destinies, must earn their living by working at machines owned by the

capitalist imperialists. The surplus derived from this exploited labor

is utilized by the capitalists as the means of further extending their

power in foreign lands.

Imperialism has brought not prosperity, but poverty to the plain people

of England.

There is another aspect of the matter. If these degraded conditions

attach to the workers in the center of the empire, what must be the

situation among the workers in the dependencies that are the objects of

imperial exploitation? Let the workers of India answer for Great

Britain; the workers of Korea answer for Japan, and the workers of Porto

Rico answer for the United States. Their lot is worse than is the lot of

the workers at the center of imperial power.

Empires yield profits to the masters and victory and glory to the

workers. Let any one who does not believe this compare the lives of the

workers in small countries like Holland, Norway, Denmark and

Switzerland, with the lives of the workers in the neighboring

empires--Russia, Germany, France and Great Britain. The advantage is all

on the side of those who live in the smaller countries that are minding

their own affairs and letting their neighbors alone.

4. _The Long Trail_

The workers of the United States are to-day following the lead of the

most powerful group of financial imperialists in the world. The trail is

a long one leading to world conquest, unimagined dizzying heights of

world power, riches beyond the ken of the present generation, and then,

the slow and terrible decay and dissolution that sooner or later

overtake those peoples that follow the paths of empire. The rulers will

wield the power and enjoy the riches. The people will struggle and

suffer and pay the price.

The American plutocracy is out to conquer the earth because it is to

their interest to do so. The will-o'-the-wisp of world empire has

captured their imaginations and they are following it blindly.

The American people, on November 2, 1920, gave the American imperialists

a blanket authority to go about their imperial business--an authority

that the rulers will not be slow to follow. First they will clean house

at home--that housecleaning will be called "the campaign for the

establishment of the open shop." Then they will go into Mexico, Central

America, China, and Europe in search of markets, trade and investment

opportunities.

Behind the investment will come the flag, carried by battle-ships and

army divisions. That flag will be brought front to front with other

flags, high words will be spoken, blood will flow, life will ebb, and

the imperialists will win their point and pocket their profit.

Behind them, in November, and at all other times of the year, there

will be the will, expressed or implied, of the working people of the

United States, who will produce the surplus for foreign investment; will

make the ships and man them; will dig the coal and bore for the oil;

will shape the machines. Their hands and the hands of their sons will be

the force upon which the ruling class must depend for its power. They

will produce, while the ruling class consumes and destroys.

The trail is a long one, but it leads none the less certainly to,

isolation and death. No people can follow the imperial trail and live.

Their liberties go first and then their lives pay the penalty of their

rulers' imperial ambition. It was so in the German Empire. It is so

to-day in the British Empire. To-morrow, if the present course is

followed, it will be equally true in the American Empire.

5. _The New Germany_

One of the chief charges against the Germans, in 1914, was that they

were not willing to leave their neighbors in peace. They were out to

conquer the world, and they did not care who knew it. It was not the

German people who held these plans for world conquest, it was the German

ruling class. The German people were quite willing to stay at home and

attend to their own affairs. Their rulers, pushed by the need for

markets and investment opportunities, and lured by the possibilities of

a world empire, were willing to stake the lives and the happiness of the

whole nation on the outcome of these ambitious schemes. They threw their

dice in the great world game of international rivalries--threw and lost;

but in their losing, they carried not only their own fortunes, but the

lives and the homes and the happiness of millions of their fellows whose

only desire was to remain at home and at peace.

Germany's offense was her ambition to gain at the expense of her

neighbors. Lacking a place in the sun, she proposed to take it by the

strength of her good right arm. This is the method by which all of the

great empires have been built and it is the method that the builders of

the American Empire have followed up to this point. The land which the

ruling class of the United States has needed has heretofore been in the

hands of weak peoples--Indians, Mexicans, a broken Spanish Empire. Now,

however, the time has come when the rulers of the United States, with

the greatest wealth and the greatest available resources of any of the

nations, are preparing to take what they want from the great nations,

and that imperial purpose can be enforced in only one way--by a resort

to arms. The rulers of the United States must take what they would have

by force, from those who now possess it. They did not hesitate to take

Panama from Colombia; they did not hesitate to take possession of Hayti

and of Santo Domingo, and they do not propose to stop there.

The people of the world know these things. The inhabitants of Latin

America know them by bitter experience. The inhabitants of Europe and of

Asia know them by hearsay. Both in the West and in the East, the United

States is known as "The New Germany."

That means that the peoples of these countries look upon the United

States and her foreign policies in exactly the same way that the people

of the United States were taught to regard Germany and her foreign

policies. To them the United States is a great, rich, brutal Empire,

setting her heel and laying her fist where necessity calls. Men and

women inside the United States think of themselves and of their fellow

citizens as human beings. The people in the other countries read the

records of the lynchings, the robberies and the murders inside the

United States; of the imperial aggression toward Latin America, and they

are learning to believe that the United States is made up of ruthless

conquerors who work their will on those that cross their path.

The plain American men and women, living quietly in their simple homes,

are none the less citizens of an aggressive, conquering Empire. They may

not have a thought directed against the well-being of a single human

creature, but they pay their taxes into the public treasury; they vote

for imperialism on each election day; they read imperialism in their

papers and hear it preached in their churches, and when the call comes,

their sons will go to the front and shed their blood in the interest of

the imperial class.

The plain people of the German Empire did not desire to harm their

fellows, nevertheless, they furnished the cannon-fodder for the Great

War. America's plain folks, by merely following the doctrine, "My

country, right or wrong--America first!" will find themselves, at no

very distant date, exactly where the German people found themselves in

1914.

6. _The Price_

The historic record, in the matter of empire, is uniform. The masters

gain; the workers pay.

The workers of the United States will not be exempt from these

inexorable necessities of imperialism. On the contrary they will be

called upon to pay the same price for empire that the workers in Britain

have paid; that the workers in the other empires have paid. What is the

price? What will world empire cost the American workers?

1. It will cost them their liberties. An empire cannot be run by a

debating society. Empires must act. In order to make this action mobile

and efficacious, authority must be centered in the hands of a small

group--the ruling class, whose will shall determine imperial policy.

Self-government is inconsistent with imperialism.

2. The workers will not only lose their own liberties, but they will be

compelled to take liberties away from the peoples that are brought under

the domination of the Empire. Self-determination is the direct opposite

of imperialism.

3. The American workers, as a part of the price of empire, will be

compelled to produce surplus wealth--wealth which they can never

consume; wealth the control of which passes into the hands of the

imperial ruling class, to be invested by them in the organization of the

Empire and the exploitation of the resources and other economic

opportunities of the dependent territory.

4. The American workers must be prepared to create and maintain an

imperial class, whose function it is to determine the policies and

direct the activities of the Empire. This class owes its existence to

the existence of empire, without which such a ruling class would be

wholly unnecessary.

5. The American workers must be prepared, in peace time as well as in

war time, to provide the "sinews of war": the fortifications, the battle

fleet, the standing army and the vast naval and military equipment that

invariably accompany empire.

6. The American workers must furthermore be ready, at a moment's call,

to turn from their occupations, drop their useful pursuits, accept

service in the army or in the navy and fight for the preservation of the

Empire--against those who attack from without, against those who seek

the right of self-determination within.

7. The American workers, in return for these sacrifices, must be

prepared to accept the poverty of a subsistence wage; to give the best

of their energies in war and in peace, and to stand aside while the

imperial class enjoys the fat of the land.

7. _A Way Out_

If the United States follows the course of empire, the workers of the

United States have no choice but to pay the price of Empire--pay it in

wealth, in misery, and in blood. But there is an alternative. Instead of

going on with the old system of the masters, the workers may establish a

new economic system--a system belonging to the workers, and managed by

them for their benefit.

The workers of Europe have tried out imperialism and they have come to

the conclusion that the cost is too high. Now they are seeking, through

their own movement--the labor movement--to control and direct the

economic life of Europe in the interest of those who produce the wealth

and thus make the economic life of Europe possible.

The American workers have the same opportunity. Will they avail

themselves of it? The choice is in their hands.

Thus far the workers of the United States have been, for the most part,

content to live under the old system, so long as it paid them a living

wage and offered them a job. The European workers felt that too in the

pre-war days, but they have been compelled--by the terrible experiences

of the past few years--to change their minds. It was no longer a

question of wages or a job in Europe. It was a question of life or

death.

Can the American worker profit by that experience? Can he realize that

he is living in a country whose rulers have adopted an imperial policy

that threatens the peace of the world? Can he see that the pursuit of

this policy means war, famine, disease, misery and death to millions in

other countries as well as to the millions at home? The workers of

Europe have learned the lesson by bitter experience. Is not the American

worker wise enough to profit by their example?

FOOTNOTE:

[58] "Industry in England," H. deB. Gibbins. New York, Scribner's, 1897,

p. 390.

THE END

INDEX.

Advertising imperialism, 169

America, conquest of, 27

America first, 170

America for Americans, 202

American capitalists, 218

" " program of, 226

" empire, costs of, 160

" " course of, 158

" " development of, 15

" " economic basis of, 74

" " growth of, 161

" imperialism, 23

" Indian, 29

" industries, growth of, 178

" people, ancestry, 159

" protectorates, 207

" Republic, disappearance of, 72

" tradition, failure of, 12

" worker and empire, 256

Anti-imperialism, 68

Appropriation of territory, 213

Automobile distribution, 183

Bankers, unity of, 150

Bethlehem Steel Co., 132

British Empire, gains of, 198

" " position of, 234

" Labor, position of, 250

Business control, 148

Canada, investments in, 206

Capitalism and Bolshevism, 244

" " war, 225

" breakdown of, 248

" law of, 223

Cherokees, dealings with, 33

Class government, 10

" struggle, in Europe, 254

Coal reserves, 180

Cohesion of wealth, 86, 118

Competition, ferocity of, 223

Competitive industry, 75

Conquering peoples, 26

Conquest of the West, 49

Council of Action, organization, 250

" " National Defense, 148

Cuban independence, 66

" treaty, 208

Dictatorship, possibility of, 222

Dominican Republic, relations with, 209

Education for imperialism, 169

Empire and British workers, 258

" characteristics of, 15

" definition of, 16

" evolution of, 22

" prevalence of, 17

" price of, 20, 264

" stages in, 19

" workers and, 262

Empires, the Big Four, 231

Europe, financial breakdown, 249

" revolution in, 246

Financial imperialism, 135

Foreign investments, 131

France, gains of, 197

Government and business, 99

Great Peace, 36

Great War, 143

" " advantages of, to the United States, 157

" " next incidents of, 235

" " results of, 240

Guaranty Trust Company, 136

Hawaii, annexation of, 62

" revolution in, 63

Hayti, conditions in, 210

Immigrants, race of, 160

Imperial alignment, 229

" goal, 222

" purpose, 165

" sentiments, 166

" task, 237

" " nature of, 228

Imperialism, advantages of, 256

" beginnings of, 65

" challenge to, 243

" cost of, 261

" establishment of, 72

" failure of, 243

" psychology of, 170

Imperialists, training of, 219

Incomes, in the United States, 115

Industrial combination, 81

" organization, 78

" revolution, 76

International exploitation, 128

" finance, 135

" Harvester Co., 133

Investing nations, 127

Investment bankers, 86

Investments in the United States, 130

Italy, gains of, 197

Job ownership, 94

Labor, colonial shortage of, 38

Landlordism, 105

Land ownership, 103

" policy, 104

Latin America, 203

Liberty, desire for, 8

Manifest destiny, 171

Mastery, avenues of, 92

Mexican War, provocation of, 55

" " success of, 56

Mexico, conquest of, 54

Monroe Doctrine, 202

" " logic of, 207

National City Bank, 138

Navy League, 146

Negro civilization, in Africa, 40

" slaves, values of, 47

Negroes, numbers enslaved, 43

New Europe, 246

Next War, contestants in, 236

" " preparations for, 241

" " pretexts for, 238

New Orleans, struggle for, 50

Ownership, advantages of, 114

Panama, relations with, 213

" revolution in, 215

" seizure of, 214

Patriotism, 147

Peace Treaty, provisions of, 224

" " results of, 194

Personal incomes, sources of, 116

Philippines, conquest of, 69

Plutocracy, 117

" control of, 148

" dictatorship of, 92

" domestic power of, 153

" economic gains of, 151

" growing power of, 143

Popular government, 9

Population, increase of, 50

Preparedness, 145

Press censorship, 210

Product ownership, 96

Profiteering, 151

Property, Indian ideas of, 30

" ownership, security of, 107

" rights, and civilization, 113

" rights of, 103

" safeguards to, 108

Public opinion, control of, 98

Resources of the United States, 179

Revolution in Europe, 246

Russia, Allied attack on, 245

" world position of, 231

Slave Coast, 39

" power, defeat of, 61

" trade, America's part in, 44

" " beginnings of, 39

" " conditions of, 43

" " development of, 42

Slavery, and expansion, 60

" beginnings of, 39

" in the United States, 45

Slaves, early demand for, 41

Southwest, conquest of, 51, 57

Sovereignty, source of, 11

Spanish War, 65

Standard Oil Co., 134

Surplus, disposal of, 123

" pressure of, 121

Teutonic peoples, 26

Texas, annexation of, 52

Timber reserves, 180

Transportation facilities, 183

Undeveloped countries, 124

United States, capital of, 181

" " financial power of, 154

" " past isolation, 192

" " position of, 221

" " products of, 184

" " resources of, 179

" " shipping, 188

" " wealth and income, 189

" " world attitude to, 263

" " world power of, 177

Wealth and income, 189

" of the United States, 89

" ownership, 90

Western Hemisphere, and the United States, 200

World conquest, 218

Workers' business, 257

Yellow peril, 232