Page:Imperialism, A Study.djvu/23

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the portion of the backward countries which came under the sway of the allies, and roused a lasting resentment in Germany and Turkey, especially against the British Empire.

The feebleness revealed in the League of Nations, designed originally as a growing instrument of political and economic internationalism, has served to aggravate the sense of injury in Germany from the seizure of her colonies, for League control is rightly felt to be a fiction, save in the matter of a trade equality only operative in certain mandates, The passion of German imperialism thus inflamed has been rivalled in intensity by Italian resentment against the insufficiency of her share of the lands disposed of under the Peace Treaties and her sentimental revival of a Roman Empire which should own the Mediterranean and large portions of North Africa. In Asia the centres of disturbance are India and the Far East. The latter is due to the conscious and avowed Imperialism of Japan, seeking her early prey in Manchuria and North China, but only limited in her further control of Asia by her straitened financial national resources and the possible intervention of Britain and America, Imperialism in India is seeking a new basis which shall reconcile a large measure of democratic self-government with two British requirements, a safeguarding of the large investment interests in Indian railways and industrial undertakings and a retention of the foreign policy of India, its internal order and protection against foreign aggression. It is too early to say how this new Constitution is likely to work, but the experiment is an important contribution to a limited Imperialism.

The most momentous of post-war events has been the Communist experiment in Russia, in its bearing upon the Imperialism of European countries. Though the Soviet Government harbours no aggressive designs upon lands outside the Russian boundaries, and is more and more