dded fear for the {108} future.
Those nations, which are least blessed with colonies and which lack at
home a broad agricultural base for the support of their industries,
look anxiously towards a possible development, which will rob them not
only of their markets and investment opportunities but also of their
necessary raw materials. To the country ruling the colony belongs in
last instance the right to decide what shall be done with its food and
raw materials. Suppose that Australia, by a special arrangement with
the mother country, lays a heavy duty upon all wool exported to other
countries than Great Britain, and thus makes German competition in the
woollen industry impossible. Suppose the cotton supply of the United
States is rendered dearer by some scheme of valorisation, like that
which Brazil applied to coffee exports, or by action of financial
groups in America, or, given a change in the Federal Constitution, by
an export duty on raw cotton. How then will Germany compete? What
could Germany do if foreign nations shut her off from access to ores,
foods and textiles? How could she solve the problem of a dwindling
supply of iron ore? As population outstrips home production of raw
materials, the dependence of industrial nations upon the countries
producing such materials increases, and the fear arises that such
foreign resources will be monopolised, and the excluded industrial
nations forced to stop their advance and to descend in the scale of
power. As this fear grows, the backward countries cease to be regarded
as a common agricultural base and become merely separate national
preserves. Each nation strives by means of an exclusive possession of
colonies to become self-sufficing. The competition for colonies
becomes a struggle for national existence.

In such a struggle for national existence, all vested rights go by the
board. A nation needing outlets will pay {109} small heed to maxims
concerning peace, internationalism and the status quo; it will ask for
the title deeds of the nations that own what it wants. So long as
Germany, for example, felt that colonies were absolutely essential to
her future prosperity, it mattered little to her that England and
France had been first in the field, that they had planted and sowed in
foreign fields while she was still struggling to secure national unity.
"Where were you when the world was divided?" the Germans asked
themselves, and they came to the belief that t