ABSTRACT
But what is the intellectual and moral attitude to-day toward this large world, broken as it still remains into a large nun)- ber of so-called separate nations? Weare hardly prepared to take a cool, clear, scientific view of international relations. The press, of which I ~poke just now, throws the limelight now upon one corner of the world, now upon another; now it is perhaps upon South Africa, now it is upon some great stir in China, again, some South American rebellion occupies the field of immediate attention, then we are s\vept away to the mystery Vol. XVII-No. t. 2
stantly brought up against this fact; you cannot find a solution adequate for the particular problem upon which you are concentrating your at'tention that is not thwarted by the play of forces outside your own nationality. That of course is conspicuously true of those movements associated with capital and labor, and indeed all movenlents which are comprised under the term "The Social Problem." It is not possible, we are now coming to see, for a social problem -to be solved by a single nation; no nation can advance toward its solution at a very much faster pace than other nations, nor can it solve what it calls its own problems itself. There are no large problems which are securely fastened within the confines of a single nationality. All attempts to make this national isolation are in the long run futile. If we attempt to interrupt what is happen.. ing in the world to-day, we find the key to that irterpretation in the tendency to equalization of the material, intellectual ar ~
~or~l resources over the face of the earth. This' comes home to us most clearly in commercial matters, in the play of com... merce between nation and nation. A generation ago that play was very slight. Now, of course, great masses of commodities are flowing tolerably freely, in spite of tariffs, over the whole surface of the globe. New countries are coming continually into the area of effective commercial intercourse. But that perhaps is not the most significant aspect of the material change which is taking place. The productive powers of mankind, capital and labor, are flowing with incomparably greater freedonl over the whole world. The modern methods of investment simply mean that huge masses of capital are moving about to find the spot where they can combine most "effectively with natural resources and with labor, and labor is seeking to follow the same line of free flow. This is the great thing which is happening from the standpoint of material devetopnlent of the earth, the flow of capital and labor, drawn primarily by the self-interest of its owners to combine in methods and a,t places which are most effective for the production of wealth for the world-not of wealth for any individual nation. This flow of capital and labor, the largest practical thing that is happening to-day, is in its real rneaning directed to the production '-Jnd
mutual fear is as far from true attainment as the Cobdenite dream-perhaps it is farther, if we look upon the actual condition of the world to-day. It is not true that the whole world has been absorbed or digested by a few great nations, or is on the point of being so digested. The seven great western powers of the world have already before them the absorption and the assimilation of nearly half the \vorld which remains undivided. Even in Europe itself we have huge tracts of territory, the Turkish empire, and to that we must now add the great Russian empire, broken up, as it now seems, or breaking up, into new fragments. Even in Europe itself, there seems to be an enormous task to be achieved before we can attain anything that could be called a stable equilibrium of po\vers, or any confederation of European States. In Asia there are the great countries of China, Turkestan, Persia, Afghanistan and Arabia, and all the vague country known as Asia Minor. In Africa, besides the existence vi the four independent states, there are huge tracts in the interior of Africa which are only nominally partitioned l among the civilized nations of the world. In America I need only mentiol that medley of weak republics in South America. These parts of the world's surface, you will say, are loosely ear-marked by the civilized nations as "buffer states," "spheres of influence" or "spheres of interest," or some other in that sliding scale of aggrandizing terms is applied to them, marking them out for future absorption by one or other of their great civilized neighbors. But thellotion that this is the beginning of rapid and final assimilation of the lower nations of the world is quite unwarranted. in fact, and we are far too hasty in our own generalizations to the effect that the future belongs to the greaL empires. The movement for the development of great empires has gone on very rapidly in recent times, but we have no assure·
m~nt that the true stability of national life will be maintained in these great, gigantic federations of states. Moreover, mos of the territory which has been acquired by the civilized nations within the last thirty years is held very slightly and upon a most precarious tenure. The dream of a single empire in the future, or of a stable equilibrium of a few empires, dividing
among them the power of the world, and existing in amicable relations with one another, proceeding upon the line of national self-development purely, is to my mind less warranted than even the dream of Cobden.
