It is the interest of exploitative capital that makes the Morning Land,
Mexico, China and Africa rotten stones in the arch of civilization. But
for exploitative capital, those regions might remain backward, socially
and politically: this would not greatly concern any industrial nation,
except in so far as it responded to a missionary impulse. The backward
states afford, however, possibilities of sudden wealth; and since this
is the case, they must attract exploiters, who must seek, and obtain,
the backing of their home governments, with resultant international
rivalry, hostility, war.
If we could confidently predict the industrialization of the backward
countries, we should be able to foresee an end of this one most
fruitful of all sources of international strife. But China will not
be industrialized for a generation, at least; and many generations
must elapse before the tropics are concession proof. Accordingly the
one hope for universal peace would appear to lie in the possibility of
divorcing, in the popular consciousness, the concessionary interest
from the national interest.
For the present war will settle nothing. When it is over, the skeleton
titles thrown about the undeveloped lands may have undergone change;
but underneath the new order, the struggle of exploitative capital
will emerge as before. Diplomatic squabbles will again arise; popular
envy will be wrought upon; international hostility will be fomented;
military and naval rivalry will again crush out progress. The minor
interest will once more drag the major interest to ruin.
There will, however, be in the situation one element new, at any rate,
to us. In a generation we shall not be, as now, a nation with almost
all its capital secure within its own boundaries. Our strong men of
speculative finance will be established in the undeveloped countries;
concessions will figure conspicuously among the items of our national
wealth. The foreign contingent of our capital will join battle with
that of the group of nations destined to fare best in the present
struggle: if Germany and Austria, in South America; if Russia and
Japan, in the Orient. And who shall say that our country may not be
a protagonist in the next great war? One half of one per cent of our
capital just failed of forcing us to subjugate Mexico.
The concession and the closed trade are the fault lines in the crust
of civilization. Solve the problems of the concession and the closed
trade, the earth hunger will have lost its strongest stimulus, and
peace, when restored, may abide throughout the world.