use.

Moreover, even the calmer minds are reached by the fundamental argument
of the necessity for extension. They recognise that despite the
brutality and bloodiness of colonialism, it at least represents a
certain phase or form of an inevitable development, the creation of an
economic unity of the World. Without colonial development, without an
exploitation of unlocked resources, the industrial growth of the
manufacturing countries cannot be maintained, and they will be thrown
back upon their own meagre resources. So long as agriculture remains
what it is to-day, the increasing millions of Western Europe, of Japan,
of the Eastern United States, must rely more and more upon their
commerce with the backward states, and must take a hand in stimulating
their production. The present nationalistic imperialism may not be the
best, it is perhaps the very worst form, that this world integration
might assume, but in any case the problem remains to be solved either
by this or some other means.

As a consequence the opposition to our present nationalistic
imperialism is tending to change from a merely negative attitude to a
positive programme for an imperialism at once humane, democratic and
international. It is an imperialism, the ideal of which is to
safe-guard the interests of the natives, to prepare them for
self-government and to carry on this process not by competition and war
between the interested nations but by mutual agreements for a common
benefit. The present cruelties and dangers are to be avoided. The
nations are to unite in a joint, higher imperialism.

It is this ideal which is to-day informing some of the leading minds of
Europe, an ideal which will convert the competitive imperialistic
strivings of rival nations into a joint and beneficent rule of
countries demonstrably {150} incapable of ruling themselves by a group
of nations acting in the interest of the world. Such a pooling of
claims is admittedly difficult and is likely to be opposed by immense
vested interests of classes and nations. It is this problem of a joint
imperialism, the solution of which alone stands between Europe and the
continuance of bitter strife and war.

[1] The profits from imperialism are only a part of the profits from
foreign investment. In an economic sense, England, France, Germany,
Holland and Belgium own parts of the United States, and the profits of
the Pennsylvania Railroad go largely to Europe as do the profit