missionary organizations were among the active groups which promoted imperialism.

Explorers and adventurers if we may couple them with prejudice to neither-were conspicuous in the early days of imperialism. Henry Morton Stanley) was something of both, and a journalist to boot. By birth he was a Welshman, of the name Rowlands, Born in Wales, of a poor family, he ran away from school, to find work in the city of Liverpool, first in a haberdasher's shop, then with a butcher. When this grew tedious, he worked his way across the sea to New Orleans. There he was adopted by a merchant by the name of Henry Morton Stanley, whose name he accepted and later made illustrious. Young Stanley had begun a prosaic existence as a country storekeeper in Arkansas when the Civil War called him to a more stirring career. Enlisting in the Confederate army, he was captured by the enemy; with ready versatility he then joined the Union army to fight against his former comrades-in-arms. Toward the close of the war he discovered a latent talent for journalism, which, when peace returned, led him to Salt Lake City, to describe the extraordinary customs of the Mormons, then to Asia Minor in search of thrilling adventure; then with General Hancock against the Indians, with the British against Abyssinia, and to Crete, and Spain. When David Livingstone, the famous missionary-explorer, was lost in the heart of Africa, Stanley was selected by James Gordon Bennett, owner of the Herald, to find him. And Stanley did. This exploit, in 1871, converted Stanley into an African explorer. In succeeding years he made repeated trips into the interior of Africa. We are not concerned here with the details of his explorations, however, but with his influence on imperialism. After making his historic journey, in the years 1874-1877, across the hitherto unexplored Congo basin in Central Africa, Stanley became an apostle of imperialism. With eloquent pen and tongue he portrayed the marvelous economic potentialities of the region he had discovered; but, far from being sordidly materialistic, he urged the sending of missionaries, the abolition of the slave traffic, and the civilization of the natives.

How this extraordinary adventurer-explorer-journalist, failing to arouse the interest of cautious English capitalists, lent his services to Leopold of Belgium and established a huge empire for

that monarch, a later chapter will tell. But a speech he delivered before a gathering of the Manchester Chamber of Commercechiefly cotton merchants-may perhaps be quoted in part. Assuming that civilization and Christianity would teach the naked negroes of Congo to wear decent cotton clothes, at least on Sundays, he estimated that one Sunday dress for each native would mean "320,000,000 yards of Manchester cotton cloth" (Cheers from the audience); and in time, when the natives had learned the importance of covering their nakedness on weekdays as well as Sundays, the amount of cloth required would amount to twenty-six million pounds sterling per annum. In his peroration he fused the mercantile and missionary motives in masterly style:

There are forty millions of people beyond the gateway of the Congo, and the cotton spinners of Manchester are waiting to clothe them. Birmingham foundries are glowing with the red metal that will presently be made into ironwork for them and the trinkets that shall adorn those dusky bosoms, and the ministers of Christ are zealous to bring them, the poor benighted heathen, into the Christian fold.1

Stanley may have been unique in his versatility and his logic, but as an imperialist explorer he was in some measure typical of scores. It was an explorer, Gustav Nachtigal) who declared the German protectorates in Kamerun and Togoland. Henry Hamilton Johnston (later Sir Harry), began his career as a scientific explorer, interested in architecture, and art, and languages, and biology, but became an empire-builder in Africa, annexing vast territories for England, and striving to complete the Cape-to-Cairo route of which he dreamed. There is no need to lengthen the list beyond the reader's patience.

Last, but by no means least, let us add a sprinkling of politicians to our already heterogeneous array of active empire-builders, with definite personal interests at stake. Some premiers and presidents have acted, more or less unwillingly, at the instigation of business and other interest-groups: Gladstone, for example, was compelled to seize Egypt though his heart may have been heavy; Bismarck yielded to the imperialist only after long resistance; Woodrow Wilson opposed imperialism with extraordinary courage, yet was driven to more than one imperialist enterprise. But others have deliberately promoted imperialism Pamphlet issued by the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, 1884

either because they believed in it, or because they felt that it would bring prestige and votes, or campaign contributions. Disraeli, apparently, believed in England's eastern empire, and at the same time was very much aware of the strength of the appeal he could make to voters on the issue of national pride. Roosevelt, with his "big stick" policy and his "Rough Rider" campaign parades, skillfully stimulated and utilized imperialist sentiment in America.

INTERESTS AND IDEAS

But, a sceptical reader may object, imposing as the array of importers, exporters, shippers, financiers, admirals, generals, officials, diplomats, missionaries, explorers, and politicians may appear when reviewed in detail, still it remains true that these active imperialist interests are minority interests. The overwhelming majority of a nation has no direct business, or professional, or military interest in colonial empire. Not only is this true of the poorer classes, who of course have no colonial investments,1 but it applies also to many, probably a majority, of capitalists and business men. Indeed, imperialism might appear to be directly contrary to the economic interests of many business men. For instance, American ownership of Hawaii injures the beetsugar producers, by admitting Hawaiian cane sugar free of duty. French ownership of Algeria may injure French wineproducers by developing the production of Algerian wine, much of which is used to slake the thirst of Frenchmen, in substitution for domestic vintages. The issue is not between "capital" and "the masses"; capital is divided, one section against another, one industry against another. Why, then, does the majority so cheerfully follow the leadership of the imperialist minorities?

Not direct interests, but ideas, not property or profession, but principles, actuate the public at large. The theories spread broadcast by imperialist propaganda are the dynamic factors impelling nations to send out armies, defray expenditures, risk wars, for the conquest of distant colonies and protectorates. It requires ideas, attuned to instinctive emotions, to make modern nations fight. The ideas which have been particularly potent in

'Although admittedly a considerable percentage of the working class is employed directly in the production of goods for export to colonies, or in industries utilizing colonial raw materials.

imperialism are the idea of preventive self-defense, which awakens the primitive emotion of fear; the idea of surplus population, resting on the instinct of self-preservation; the ideas of economic nationalism, and national prestige, appealing to instincts of gregariousness and self-aggrandizement; and an aggressive sort of altruism, which gratifies our innate pride. These ideas require analysis.

Fear, so easily aroused in the human soul, and so powerful when once awakened, is a cardinal factor in imperialist world politics. The citizens of modern nations fear attack, defeat, conquest. To persuade them that such calamities may be prevented by preparedness for war, is a relatively easy task, as the universality of armies and navies all too convincingly testifies. But of what use is a navy without coaling stations and naval bases? Thus the argument proceeds. If hostile fleets are to be held off from a vulnerable coast, the nation must have outlying naval bases and defeat the enemy's squadrons before they approach. That Great Britain has secured naval bases in all the seven seas, every schoolboy knows. But Great Britain is not unique in this respect. The need of naval bases was one of the chief arguments used by Jules Ferry in the eighties to justify French annexations. It is one of the most popular justifications for American ownership of the Philippines, Hawaii, Samoa, Porto Rico, the Danish West Indies. It has given anxiety to the Japanese, the Germans, the Dutch, the Italians.

A kindred theory, springing from the same motive of selfprotection, is that a nation must control raw material in time of war. It is all very well, imperialists argue, to purchase iron, and coal, and cotton, and rubber, and nitrate, and oil from neighbors in time of peace, but in war a nation must have its own supplies, else its cannon will lack shells, its arsenals will stand idle without coal, its warships, tanks, and airplanes will have no fuel, its laboratories will look in vain for ingredients of explosives. What argument could be more plausible, or more moving? The unimpassioned student may perhaps inquire whether ownership of oil wells in some distant colony will be of value, in war, to any except the supreme naval power, that is, England. But to the "man in the street" such doubt rarely

occurs.

Even more influential has been the idea that the great civilized

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nations, being overpopulated," need colonies as outlets for their "surplus population." To France, of course, no such argument could be applied, nor was it much used in England; but it has enjoyed an extraordinary vogue in Germany, Japan, and Italy, and it is not unfamiliar in the United States. In a densely populated country, where competition for employment is keen and the cost of living is rising, it is easy to believe that overcrowding is responsible for unemployment and poverty, and that additional breathing-room for the teeming millions is an absolute necessity. The case is all the more convincing, if thousands of emigrants are annually leaving their "overcrowded" mother-country, to find homes in more spacious

lands.

Germany was in this situation, on the eve of the outburst of imperialism. In the decade from 1871 to 1880, no fewer than 625,968 Germans forsook the Fatherland, to become inhabitants of the United States, Brazil, and other foreign countries. And yet, the population in Germany increased, at the same time, from about forty-one to over forty-five millions. After 1880 the figures became even more startling. In the years 1881-1884, some 747,168 Germans emigrated-more in four years than in the previous decade. Such figures the imperialist propagandists in Germany used with telling effect. Germans became so profoundly convinced of their "surplus population," that the argument was still being mouthed long after the emigration figures had sunk-as they did in the 1890's and after to an insignificant figure, and after the growth of population in Germany to fifty, then to sixty, then to sixty-five millions had demonstrated that the anxiety expressed in the eighties was quite unwarranted.1

The Italian public, likewise, was alarmed by emigration figures, which rose from 94,000 in 1881 to 118,000 in 1891, to 282,000 in

The following table computed from the Statistisches Handbuch für das Deutsche Reich (Berlin, 1907), shows the situation more plainly.