ike sum.
The British investments in Belgium, France, Germany and Austria were
negligible. Thus it was in the new and undeveloped countries, not in the
old and developed ones that Britain sought her investment opportunities.
In their efforts to play at this great game of imperialism, and to win
their share of profitable business, Germany, France, Japan, Belgium and
the United States were dogging the British heels.

Each of the important producing countries must provide itself with the
essential raw materials--coal, iron, copper, cotton, rubber, wheat,
etc., upon which the continuance of its industrial life depends.
Consequently each of these countries busies itself to secure the control
of the largest possible reserves of the raw materials most needed by its
own industries.

The case of petroleum is peculiarly instructive. When it became
apparent, in the early years of the present century that oil burning
ships, motor vehicles and air craft were bound to play a determining
part in the economic life of the immediate future, various interests
such as the Shell Transport, Royal Dutch and the Standard Oil, with the
open or tacit backing of their respective state departments, entered on
a campaign to secure the world's supply of petroleum. In Mexico, Central
America, the Near East, Russia and the United States this struggle has
been waged, and it still continues to be one of the most active contests
for economic power that has been fought in recent times.

Petroleum-hunger is only one of the many economic factors that drive
modern nations. The efforts to control the coal and iron of Alsace and
Lorraine, the Saar and the Ruhr undoubtedly played a leading role in
making the War of 1914 and the Peace of 1919. The partition of Upper
Silesia was based on the same contest for iron and coal. Wherever the
coal veins or iron deposits are, there, likewise, are gathered together
the representatives of industrial enterprise, which depends for its life
upon iron and coal.

As the resources of the earth become better known, and their extent more
definitely established, there is every reason to believe that, with the
continuance of the present economic system, the necessity for exploiting
them will become greater, and the attempts to dominate them will become
more aggressive.

Whether the object of the contest be trade, markets, investment
opportunities or resources, the result is the same--rivalry, antagonism,
bitterness, hatred, con