a growth of overseas investment, needed on the one hand for the lucrative disposal of surplus capital beyond the requirements of home use, on the other for securing the development of the natural resources of backward lands for their exclusive or preferential use, and exclusive or preferential markets for their manufactured surplus.
As this economic imperialism, primarily a British policy, spread to a number of other industrially developed Western powers, the economic conflicts assumed more and more a political shape, each government being induced to use its diplomatic, and in the last resource its armed force for the protection or assertion of the interest of its own traders and investors.
Here is the widest area of economic conflict, qualified but slightly by trade treaties and other rudiments of an internationalism which as yet has been brought into no reliable adjustments with the dominant principle and practice of independent absolute sovereignty, extended to cover the colonies, protectorates, and spheres of interest which fall within the category of empire.
Thus, while it would be foolish to deny that the economic system contains elements of order in its industry and markets, it is manifestly failing to meet efficiently the requirements of modern civilisation. The very fact that everyone becomes increasingly dependent for the satisfaction of economic needs upon the successful adjustments of industry, trade, and finance, of a world-wide character, has
