his argument is to immediate interest, which, as a rule, overrides
considerations of ultimate interest. To the German workman, for
example, it seems plain that English proletarians will not gain _his_
salvation; he must gain it himself. The German wage-earner must be
better fed, clothed, housed, educated, organised, and all these needs
translate themselves into more regular work, better paid. But if
German industry is defeated by English industry, the German workman
will suffer unemployment, reduction of wages, lockouts, unsuccessful
strikes, and a decline in trade union membership. Such a retrogression
means a {145} delaying of the ultimate working class victory as well as
a worse situation in the present. And, parenthetically, workingmen and
Socialists, being ordinary men with the ambitions and appetites of
ordinary men, do not spend seven evenings in the week in contemplation
of a Co-operative Commonwealth any more than the average church-goer
devotes his entire mind to the Day of Judgment. The German Socialist
has his bowling club and his _Stammtisch_; he must buy shoes for the
children and a new pipe for himself, and his weekly wages count more
than his share in a new society, which will not come until he is dead.
Besides his wages, he is interested in his government insurance
premiums, in the education of his children, in the things that he and
his family and the families of his class wish to enjoy. If imperialism
appears to raise wages as well as profits, he is not likely to oppose
it on sentimental grounds, especially as there are theorists who stand
ready to prove that Imperialism is merely the last phase of Capitalism
and will bring Socialism all the sooner.

And the argument for the beneficial reaction of imperialism upon wages
seems at first glance convincing. The German workman sees that wages
are high in England. He is told that the cause is the early British
conquest of foreign markets.[5] His own rapid progress during recent
{146} years he associates with a simultaneous increase in German
industry and foreign trade. If therefore the foreign field is to be
extended, why is the German eternally to be left out in the division?
Such a workman does not like the methods used, but so long as markets
are to be seized, whether Germany takes part or not, he is, with mental
reservations, in favour of a "firm" policy.[6] He wants not war, but
foreign markets. Let Germany become rich by means of imperiali