military rulers who in Japan, as in Germany, conduct the territorial aggressions, and the capitalists who must help to finance them. But the clearer-sighted capitalists perceive that dictatorships and their imperial enterprises, expensive as they may be, are preferable to the more revolutionary courses to which democracies are now committed. Imperialism thus figures as an important and imposing feature of neo-capitalism, seeking to avert internal democratic struggles for economic equalitarianism by providing outlets for surplus goods and surplus population together with emotional appeals to the combatant predacity which animates a spirited foreign policy. It may be true that Imperialism in its competitive aspect carries within itself the seeds of its own demise, leading, as it must, to conflicts ever more destructive to life and property. Indeed, its competition for an ever shrinking area of profitable acquisition may so intensify the struggle between the possessing and the non-possessing nations as to destroy the fabric of civilization. Whether the slowly evolving rationality and sociability of man have advanced sufficiently to furnish a strong enough safeguard against this imperial predacity is the question that confronts the world to-day.
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Though the general trend of Imperialism in its economic and political character has not changed within the past thirty years, the attitude of many countries towards Imperialism has undergone considerable changes, chiefly, though not entirely, as a result of post-war policies. It may be well, briefly, to cite the nature of these changes. The Peace Treaties, by removing from Germany and Turkey large areas of imperial control and placing them as mandated territories under the control of victorious allies, chiefly Britain, her Dominions and France, enlarged considerably
