The American Empire Part 26

The Russian menace is immediate. Bolshevism is not only the ant.i.thesis of Capitalism but its mortal enemy. If Bolshevism persists and spreads through Central Europe, India and China, capitalism will be wiped from the earth.

A federation of Russia, the Baltic states, the new border provinces, and the Central Empires on a socialist basis would give the socialist states of central and northern Europe most of the European food area, a large portion of the European raw material area and all of the technical skill and machinery necessary to make a self-supporting economic unit. The two hundred and fifty millions of people in Russia and Germany combined in such a socialist federation would be as irresistible economically as they would be from a military point of view.

Such a Central European federation, developing as it must along the logical lines that lead into India and China would be the strongest single unit in the world, viewed from the standpoint of resources, of population, of productive power or of military strength. The only possible rivals to such a combination would be the widely scattered forces of the British Empire and the United States, separated from it by the stretches of the Atlantic Ocean. Against such a grouping j.a.pan would be powerless because it would deprive her of the source of raw materials upon which she must rely for her economic development. Great Britain with her relatively small population and her rapidly diminishing resources could make no head against such a combination even with the a.s.sistance of her colonial empire. Northern India is as logical a home for Bolshevism as Central China or South-eastern Russia. Connect European Russia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Siberia, India and China with bonds that make effective cooperation possible and these countries--containing nearly two-thirds of the population of the world, and possessed of the resources necessary to maintain a modern civilization--could laugh at outside interference.

Two primary difficulties confront the organizers of the Federated Socialist Republics of Europe and Asia. One is nationality, language, custom and tradition, together with the ancient antagonisms which have been so carefully nurtured through the centuries. The other is the frightful economic disorganization prevalent throughout Central Europe,--a disorganization which would be increased rather than diminished by the establishment of new forms of economic life. Even if such an organization were perfected, it must remain, for a long time to come, on a defensive basis.

3. _The Yellow Peril_

The "yellow peril" thus far is little more than the j.a.panese menace to British and American trade in the Far East. The j.a.panese Archipelago is woefully deficient in coal, iron, petroleum, water power and agricultural land. The country is over-populated and must depend for its supplies of food and raw materials upon continental Asia. There seems to be no probability that j.a.pan and China can make any effective working agreement in the near future that will const.i.tute an active menace to the supremacy of the white race. Alone j.a.pan is too weak in resources and too spa.r.s.e in population. Combined with China she would be formidable, but her military policy in Korea and in the Shantung Province have made any effective cooperation with China at least temporarily impossible.

Furthermore, the j.a.panese are not seeking world conquest. On the contrary, they are bent upon maintaining their traditional aloofness by having a Monroe Doctrine for the East. This doctrine will be summed up in the phrase, "The East for the Easterners,"--the easterners being the j.a.panese. Such a policy would prove a serious menace to the trade of the United States and of Great Britain. It would prove still more of a hindrance to the investment of American and British capital in the very promising Eastern enterprises, and would close the door on the Western efforts to develop the immense industrial resources of China. The recent "Chinese Consortium," in which j.a.pan joined with great reluctance, suggests that the major capitalist powers have refused to recognize the exclusive right of j.a.pan to the economic advantages of the Far East. How seriously this situation will be taken by the United States and Great Britain depends in part upon the vigor with which j.a.pan prosecutes her claims and in part upon the preoccupation of these two great powers with Bolshevism in Europe and with their own compet.i.tive activities in ship building, trade, finance and armament.

4. _The British and the American Empires_

The two remaining major forces in world economics and politics are the British Empire and the American Empire,--the mistress of the world, and her latest rival in the compet.i.tion for world power. Between them, to-day, most of the world is divided. The British Empire includes the Near East, Southern Asia, Africa, Australia and half of North America.

d.o.g.g.i.ng her are Germany, France, Russia and Italy, and, as she goes to the Far East,--j.a.pan. The United States holds the Western Hemisphere, where she is supreme, with no enemy worthy the name.

The British power was shaken by the War of 1914. Never, in modern times, had the British themselves, been compelled to do so much of the actual fighting. The war debt and the disorganization of trade incident to the war period proved serious factors in the curtailment of British economic supremacy. At the same time, the territorial gains of the British were enormous, particularly in the Near East.

The Americans secured real advantages from the war. They grew immensely rich in profiteering during the first three years, they emerged with a relatively small debt, with no great loss of life, and with the greatest economic surpluses and the greatest immediate economic advantages possessed by any nation of the world.

The British Empire was the acknowledged mistress of the world in 1913.

Her nearest rival (Germany) had one battleship to her two; one ton of merchant shipping to her three, and two dollars of foreign investments to her five. This rivalry was punished as the successive rivals of the British Empire have been punished for three hundred years.

The war was won by the British Empire and her Allies, but in the hour of victory a new rival appeared. By 1920 that rival had a naval program which promised a fleet larger than the British fleet in 1924 or 1925; within three years she had increased her merchant tonnage to two-thirds of the British tonnage, and her foreign investments were three times the foreign investments of Great Britain. This new rival was the American Empire--whose immense economic strength const.i.tuted an immediate threat to the world power of Great Britain.

5. _The Next Incident in the Great War_

Some nation, or some group of nations has always been in control of the known world or else in active compet.i.tion for the right to exercise such a control. The present is an era of compet.i.tion.

Capitalism has revolutionized the world's economic life. By 1875 the capitalist nations were in a mad race to determine which one should dominate the capitalist world and have first choice among the undeveloped portions of the earth. The compet.i.tors were Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia and Italy. j.a.pan and the United States did not really enter the field for another generation.

The War of 1914 decided this much:--that France and Italy were too weak to play the big game in a big way, that Germany could not compete effectively for some time to come; that the Russians would no longer play the old game at all. There remained j.a.pan, Great Britain and the United States and it is among these three nations that the capitalist world is now divided. j.a.pan is in control of the Far East. Great Britain holds the Near East, Africa and Australia; the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere.

The Great War began in 1914. It will end when the question is decided as to which of these three empires will control the Earth.

Great Britain has been the dominant factor in the world for a century.

She gained her position after a terrific struggle, and she has maintained it by vanquishing Holland, Spain, France and Germany.

The United States is out to capture the economic supremacy of the earth.

Her business men say so frankly. Her politicians fear that their const.i.tuents are not as yet ready to take such a step. They have been rea.s.sured, however, by the presidential vote of November, 1920.

American business life already is imperial, and political sentiment is moving rapidly in the same direction.

Great Britain holds t.i.tle to the pickings of the world. America wants some or all of them. The two countries are headed straight for a conflict, which is as inevitable as morning sunrise, unless the menace of Bolshevism grows so strong, and remains so threatening that the great capitalist rivals will be compelled to join forces for the salvation of capitalist society.

As economic rivalries increase, compet.i.tion in military and naval preparation will come as a matter of course. Following these will be the efforts to make political alliances--in the East and elsewhere.

These two countries are old time enemies. The roots of that enmity lie deep. Two wars, the white hot feeling during the Civil War, the anti-British propaganda, carried, within a few years, through the American schools, the traditions among the officers in the American navy, the presence of 1,352,251 Irish born persons in the United States (1910), the immense plunder seized by the British during the War of 1914,--these and many other factors will make it easy to whip the American people into a war-frenzy against the British Empire.

Were there no economic rivalries, such antagonisms might slumber for decades, but with the economic struggle so active, these other matters will be kept continually in the foreground.

The capitalists of Great Britain have faced dark days and have surmounted huge obstacles. They are not to be turned back by the threat of rivalry. The American capitalists are backed by the greatest available surpluses in the world; they are ambitious, full of enthusiasm and energy, they are flushed with their recent victory in the world war, and overwhelmed by the unexpected stores of wealth that have come to them as a result of the conflict. They are imbued with a boundless faith in the possibilities of their country. Neither Great Britain nor the United States is in a frame of mind to make concessions. Each is confident--the British with the traditional confidence of centuries of world leadership; the Americans with the buoyant, idealistic confidence of youth. It is one against the other until the future supremacy of the world is decided.

6. _The Imperial Task_

American business interests are engaged in the work of building an international business structure. American industry, directed from the United States, exploiting foreign resources for American profit, and financed by American inst.i.tutions, is gaining a footing in Latin America, in Europe and Asia.

The business men of Rome built such a structure two thousand years ago.

They competed with and finally crushed their rivals in Tyre, Corinth and Carthage. In the early days of the Empire, they were the economic masters, as well as the political masters of the known world.

Within two centuries the business men of Great Britain have built an international business structure that has known no equal since the days of the Caesars. Perhaps it is greater, even, than the economic empire of the Romans. At any rate, for a century that British empire of commerce and industry has gone unchallenged, save by Germany. Germany has been crushed. But there is an industrial empire rising in the West. It is new. Its strength is as yet undetermined. It is uncoordinated. A new era has dawned, however, and the business men of the United States have made up their minds to win the economic supremacy of the earth.

Already the war is on between Great Britain and the United States. The two countries are just as much at war to-day as Great Britain and Germany were at war during the twenty years that preceded 1914. The issues are essentially the same in both cases,--commercial and economic in character, and it is these economic and commercial issues that are the chief causes of modern military wars--that are in themselves economic wars which may at any moment be transferred to the military arena.

British capitalists are jealously guarding the privileges that they have collected through centuries of business and military conflict. The American capitalists are out to secure these privileges for themselves.

On neither side would a military settlement of the issue be welcomed. On both sides it would be regarded as a painful necessity. War is an incident in imperialist policy. Yet the position of the imperialist as an international exploiter depends upon his ability to make war successfully. War is a part of the price that the imperialist must pay for his opportunity to exploit and control the earth.

After Sedan, it was Germany versus Great Britain for the control of Europe. After Versailles it is the United States versus Great Britain for the control of the capitalist earth. Both nations must spend the next few years in active preparation for the conflict.

The governments of Great Britain and the United States are to-day on terms of greatest intimacy. Soon an issue will arise--perhaps over Mexico, perhaps over Persia, perhaps over Ireland, perhaps over the extension of American control in the Caribbean. There is no difficulty of finding a pretext.

Then there will follow the time-honored method of arousing the people on either side to wrath against those across the border. Great Britain will point to the race-riots and negro-lynchings in America as a proof that the people of the United States are barbarians. British editors will cite the wanton taking of the Ca.n.a.l Zone as an indication of the willingness of American statesmen to go to any lengths in their effort to extend their dominion over the earth. The newspapers of the United States will play up the terrorism and suppression in Ireland and there are many Irishmen more than ready to lend a hand in such an enterprise; tyranny in India will come in for a generous share of comment; then there are the relations between Great Britain and the Turks, and above all, there are the evidences in the Paris Treaty of the way in which Great Britain is gradually absorbing the earth. Unless the power of labor is strong enough to turn the blow, or unless the capitalists decide that the safety of the capitalist world depends upon their getting together and dividing the plunder, the result is inevitable.

The United States is a world Empire in her own right. She dominates the Western Hemisphere. Young and inexperienced, she nevertheless possesses the economic advantages and political authority that give her a voice in all international controversies. Only twenty years have pa.s.sed since the organizing genius of America turned its attention from exclusively domestic problems to the problems of financial imperialism that have been agitating Europe for a half a century. The Great War showed that American men make good soldiers, and it also showed that American wealth commands world power.

With the aid of Russia, France, j.a.pan and the United States Great Britain crushed her most dangerous rival--Germany. The struggle which destroyed Germany's economic and military power erected in her stead a more menacing economic and military power--the United States. Untrained and inexperienced in world affairs, the master cla.s.s of the United States has been placed suddenly in the t.i.tle role. America over night has become a world empire and over night her rulers have been called upon to think and act like world emperors. Partly they succeeded, partly they bungled, but they learned much. Their appet.i.tes were whetted, their imaginations stirred by the vision of world authority. To-day they are talking and writing, to-morrow they will act--no longer as novices, but as masters of the ruling cla.s.s in a nation which feels herself destined to rule the earth.

The imperial struggle is to continue. The j.a.panese Empire dominates the Far East; the British Empire dominates Southern Asia, the Near East, Africa and Australia; the American Empire dominates the Western Hemisphere. It is impossible for these three great empires to remain in rivalry and at peace. Economic struggle is a form of war, and the economic struggle between them is now in progress.

7. _Continuing the Imperial Struggle_

The War of 1914 was no war for democracy in spite of the fact that millions of the men who died in the trenches believed that they were fighting for freedom. Rather it was a war to make the world safe for the British Empire. Only in part was the war successful. The old world was made safe by the elimination of Britain's two dangerous rivals--Germany and Russia; but out of the conflict emerged a new rival--unexpectedly strong, well equipped and eager for the conflict.

The war did not destroy imperialism. It was fought between five great empires to determine which one should be supreme. In its result, it gave to Great Britain rather than to Germany the right to exploit the undeveloped portions of Asia and of Africa.

The Peace--under the form of "mandates"--makes the process of exploitation easier and more legal than it ever has been in the past.

The guarantees of territorial integrity, under the League Covenant, do more than has ever been done heretofore to preserve for the imperial masters of the earth their imperial prerogatives.

New names are being used but it is the old struggle. Egypt and India helped to win the war, and by that very process, they fastened the shackles of servitude more firmly upon their own hands and feet. The imperialists of the world never had less intention than they have to-day of quitting the game of empire building. Quite the contrary--a wholly new group of empire builders has been quickened into life by the experiences of the past five years.

The present struggle for the possession of the oil fields of the world is typical of the economic conflicts that are involved in imperial struggles. For years the capitalists of the great investing nations have been fighting to control the oil fields of Mexico. They have hired brigands, bought governors, corrupted executives. The war settled the Mexican question in favor of the United States. Mexico, considered internationally, is to-day a province of the American Empire.