The methods by which Great Britain, in haphazard fashion, built up her imperial domain have not always been those which conscientious British can defend. They have brought Great Britain into disrepute and they have been used as precedents by rival nations who make no pretense to British scruples. The Great War in Europe has been called the "nemesis of Lord Beaconsfield." Were it not for the imperial chicanery of Lord Beaconsfield's period of unscrupulous glory, the Balkans might never have been fanned into the flames which set all Europe on fire.
England is very rich, if you look at her from above, but her wealth through tradition and through legalization of privilege and abuse is in very few hands. The landholding dukes and the lords of commerce and finance hold the resources of England in their grasp. One fourth the population of Great Britain hold virtually nothing at all. One tenth of them are persistently submerged, and with the waste and havoc of the present war, another tenth will be found to have fallen with them. Says Franklin:
The profits of no trade can ever be equal to the expense of compelling it by force of armies.
But the profits of the trade obtained through compulsion go to the undeserving few. The cost of compulsion in blood and in gold falls on the body of the nation.
The governments of the world take the risks of imperialism. The great trading, mining, and exploiting corporations receive the gains. In almost every large transaction of any government, there is this constant source of confusion. What the nation expends should be balanced by what the nation receives. It is not enough to estimate "our outgoes" on the one hand and "our receipts" on the other when the outgoes are drains on the public funds, and the receipts are private gains. This fallacy of administration may be found on every hand in connection with almost every item of public expenditure. Public expenditure turned to private gain is the very essence of privilege, and privilege wherever found is the betrayer of justice, the antithesis of democracy. Where privilege exists it violates the principle of equality before the law. In Imperial exploitation a thousand little streams lead from home activities to swell the wealth drawn from overseas.
We admit, says Professor J. Arthur Thomson,
that wars have been necessary and righteous—especially necessary, and that they may be so still, but this opinion does not affect the fact that prolonged war in which a nation takes part is bound to impoverish the breed, since the character of the breed always depends on the men who are left. The only thing a nation dies of is lack of men and is there not disquieting evidence of the increase of incapables? It is said (in Great Britain) that we can not relax one spine of our national belligerence since we must, at all cost, uphold our national supremacy, having all these teeming millions to feed. But is not this, in part at least, a vicious circle. Is it not preoccupation with militarism that is responsible for keeping up our national misery? With a little money saved off belligerence, what might not be done towards social improvement?
