preferential policy applied to a picked quarter of the globe by Great Britain and her Dominions has a natural reaction upon other countries which have. entered on a capitalist career. It stimulates them to seek territorial expansion for themselves with a view to exclusive markets and areas for planting their surplus labour and capital, while feeding a dangerous resentment against the satisfied or glutted countries which have pre-empted the most desirable territories. The peril which confronts the world to-day arises manifestly from the new passion for imperial growth on the part of the great unsatisfied Powers and the conscious avowal of their aggressive intentions. This peril has been increased by the annexation of the German colonies under the Peace Treaty. For though the tangible value of these colonies to Germany either in terms of trade or as an outlet for her surplus population was extremely small, their seizure and transfer to the various Allies under the title of Mandatory territories has been a natural source of grievance to Germany. The air of hypocrisy which attended this power of transfer, the secret haggling of the Allies, solemnly endorsed later on by these same Allies acting as Council of the League, did not help to make this seizure more palatable.
It may be true that the capitalist system in Italy, as a whole and in the long run, stands to lose rather than to gain by its costly seizure of Ethiopia. It may be true that Japan would have been economically wiser to have pursued a policy of peaceful penetration in Manchuria and North China instead of the expensive military operations upon which she has embarked. But it is wrong to exclude capitalist and business motives from the play of such imperialism and to impute it to the arrogance of political megalomania. Certain important organised business interests in Italy and in Japan have stood to gain out of the expenses
