ter.
And those Frenchmen who regret this disappearance of their race, and
declare that the energy and blood and money which is now poured out so
lavishly in Africa and in Asia ought to be diverted to its arrest, to
the colonization and development of France by better social,
industrial, commercial, and political organization, to the resisting of
the exploitation of the mother country by inflowing masses of
foreigners, are declared to be bad patriots, dead to the sentiment of
the flag, dead to the call of the bugle, are silenced in fact by a
fustian as senseless and mischievous as that which in some marvelous
way the politician, hypnotized by the old formulae, has managed to make
pass as "patriotism" in most countries.
The French, like their neighbors, are not interested in the Germans of
the Champs-Elysees, but only in the Germans at Agadir: and it is for
these latter that the diplomats fight, and the war budgets swell.
And from that silent and pacific expansion, which means so much both
negatively and positively, attention is diverted to the banging of the
war drum, and the dancing of the patriotic dervishes.
And on the other side we are to assume that Germany has during the
period of France's expansion--since the war--not expanded at all. That
she has been throttled and cramped--that she has not had her place in
the sun: and that is why she must fight for it and endanger the
security of her neighbors.
Well, I put it to you again that all this in reality is false: that
Germany has not been cramped or throttled; that, on the contrary, as we
recognize when we get away from the mirage of the map, her expansion
has been the wonder of the world. She has added 20,000,000 to her
population--one-half the present population of France--during a period
in which the French population has actually diminished. Of all the
nations in Europe, she has cut the biggest swath in the development of
world trade, industry, and influence. Despite the fact that she has not
"expanded" in the sense of mere political dominion, a proportion of her
population, equivalent to the white population of the whole colonial
British Empire, make their living, or the best part of it, from the
development and exploitation of territory outside her borders. These
facts are not new, they have been made the text of thousands of
political sermons preached in England itself during the last few years;
but one side of their significance seems to have been mi
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