Publisher's Synopsis
From the PREFACE.
It is of the utmost importance that America should know the kind of peace it wants. For America has lost her isolation. She has become a world-power. Our economic relations are as wide as the world. The peace which follows will determine our foreign policy. It will make for permanent peace or it may lay the mines of future wars.
Previous peace settlements have been interim arrangements negotiated by the ruling classes. They have been truce agreements. War has, in fact, been continuous. At times it was a war of diplomacy. At intervals it became armed conflict. But in some form or other Europe has been at war for the last fifty years. The conflict was not always between the same Powers. Alliances shifted. The points in dispute were often far apart. But the controversy revolved about the same kind of imperialistic interests; the possession of territories, strategic points and waterways, trade routes and concessions belonging to other people. As a result of this struggle almost all of Asia, the whole of Africa, the entire Mediterranean basin, and the islands of the seas, with a combined population of half a billion people have been made subject to the greater Powers.
That is why Europe could not make a peace that was permanent. The subject world would not remain subject, and the division would not remain satisfactory to the warring Powers. Such peace as the world enjoyed was merely a breathing-space in which to prepare for the next war. Imperialism is war smouldering.
This book is a study of imperialism. It is admittedly fragmentary. For the history of imperialism is the history of the diplomacy and foreign relations of Europe, as well as of the conquest and exploitation of a great part of the world. It is also a study of the economic forces responsible for imperialism; of the interests that mined the world with explosives of the most dangerous kind.
The war has created conditions in America that are making us imperialistic. Our foreign commerce has shot up to $9,000,000,000 a year. We are building a great merchant marine. We have become a creditor nation. We already have billions in foreign investments. We are creating the most powerful navy in the world. Dollar diplomacy is being boldly demanded; and dollar diplomacy leads to economic imperialism. Economic imperialism is the forerunner of force, of conquest, of wars. That has been the sequence of imperialism in all of the greater Powers.
That is why the kind of peace is so important to America. For the time may come when our new-born economic internationalism may challenge the monopoly of the earth, the closed doors, the spheres of influence, the trade preferences enjoyed by the European Powers. An imperialistic peace with the world distributed as in the past may close a great part of the world to our trade. Our new-born commerce and our great merchant marine may be constricted. Our expanded industry may become explosive. Unemployed men are a danger to the existing social order. They, too, may be receptive to imperialism, to a demand that no nation and no settlement shall stand in the way of their employment. That is the psychology of a state saturated with surplus wealth seeking an outlet.
We cannot assume that America is immune from the forces that have driven Europe into the struggle for territories, privileges, and monopolies. Our activities in Mexico do not justify any such confidence in ourselves; nor do the connection of our financiers with the Chinese six-Power loan and their pressure for diplomatic support for penetration into China and Central America....
