country for a long, very long number of years. But the financial game of investment can be played by any country which has any capital at all. However small it may be, and however large the home requirements may seem, it can always find in a more backward country a still more profitable investment—provided its activity is safeguarded by a natural or artificial monopoly. And as the latter kind of monopoly is best provided by the subjugation of the natives and by the forcible ejection of all rivals, this form of capitalist activity leads to the establishment of "zones of influence and protectorates, and is the most fruitful cause of international friction the world has ever seen.
This is the "signature" (to use a musical term) under which the present war broke out, and just as in music the key in which a piece is written is generally recognised by its last note, so will the key of the present war, however complicated its harmony may be, emerge dear when its last chord is struck. By the terms of peace, even the most enthusiastic among the audience will see that the signature of the fine battle symphony which they have just heard was Imperialism, and that the whole bloody exercise turned round one subject, viz., whose capital is to gather dividends from the riches of Turkey or of the Congo, and whose capital is to look on in greedy impotence, with a watering, but empty mouth.
NATIONALITIES AND PEACE
In what relation do the professed war-aims of the Allies stand to the real causes of the war? This question must rise in every mind that gives itself the trouble of studying the Allies note to President Wilson in the light of the deeper origins of the war. A stranger coming to our planet and reading that note would think that the war, like the wars for Italian independence, has been caused by the unfulfilled national aspirations of a number of young and oppressed races. A cursory reading of the war speeches, pamphlets, and other pronouncements during the last two years and a half would probably confirm him in his first impression. Was not the war in the first instance brought about by a bullying ultimatum served by Austria upon small Serbia and by the chivalrous intervention of Russia on behalf of the latter? In the case of this
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