working more. The social evils resulting at home from such a
condition can be cured by changes in taxation and the distribution of
wealth, by legislation which gives a greater part of the income from
foreign investments to the nation as a whole, and thus forces the
rentiers back into industrial life. So long, however, as foreign
investment is essential to the widening of the agricultural base of
industrial nations, it will not be stopped by its beneficiaries.[8]

Those who advocate a complete cessation of the export {136} of
capital,[9] therefore, might as well argue against its accumulation.
You could not stop it if you wished, and would be none the wiser for
wishing it. The export of capital is merely an export of goods, paid
for in credit instead of in goods, and the only way to prevent credit
from coming into the country is the suicidal method of expelling the
creditor. It is unlikely, therefore, that this movement will cease
until the demand for capital is fairly equalised throughout the world,
until the backward nations of to-day are sated with capital or have
themselves become industrial countries.

The danger lies in exactly the opposite direction, not in an abstention
by wealthy nations from investing abroad, but in so keen, unscrupulous
and rough-handed a competition for the right to invest as to result in
war.

This danger of war is the final argument of anti-imperialists. They
argue that the sacrifices which result in increased profits to
investors and merchants are made by the masses who profit least from
such investment. Not only do the people pay for the armaments to
secure political domination, but also for the wars, which in these days
of clashing imperialistic ambitions are an ever-present possibility.
So long as the imperialistic scramble continues war will be inevitable.
For no new dominion can be secured without threatening the interests or
pretensions of rival imperial nations. The vastly extended empires are
cheek by jowl. An extension of one power anywhere menaces the colonies
of another nation; rival colonial ambitions merge with strategical
questions. Just as the United States will not endure Japan on the West
Coast of Mexico, nor England Germany on the West Coast of Morocco or on
the Persian Gulf, so each nation fears the approach of other nations to
its most distant {137} possessions. Immediately even visions arise of
coaling stations, from which great fleets may later issue, to