dle to dispute."[1]

Necessity is a large and a vague word; it may mean any degree of
compulsion or freedom. Yet the Chinese official is right when he
emphasises the immensity of the economic forces driving the Western
nations outward. Not adventure, ambition or religious propagandism
will account for the full momentum of this movement. Back of the
missionaries, traders, soldiers, financiers, diplomats, who are opening
up "backward" countries stand hundreds of millions of people, whose
primary daily needs make them unconscious imperialists.

At the bottom this outward driving force is the breeding impulse, the
growth of population. In 1800, one hundred and twenty-two millions of
people lived in western Europe, whereas in 1900 the population was two
hundred and forty millions,[2] and the rate of increase is still rapid.
The population has doubled; the area has remained the same. The new
millions cannot be fed or clothed according to their present standard
of living unless food and raw materials come from abroad. They depend
for their existence on outside agricultural countries.

This increase of European population, moreover, has been a net
increase, after emigration has been deducted. {77} Although during the
last century tens of millions of immigrants have gone from western
Europe to the United States, Canada, Brazil and the Argentine; the home
population has increased by over one hundred and seventeen millions and
is to-day increasing by twenty millions a decade.[3] For all of these
twenty millions no sufficient outlet can be found either in old or in
new lands. The problem, therefore, is not to find homes for them
abroad but to secure their existence at home. And this existence can
only be secured by raising the necessary food in distant agricultural
countries and by turning over a large part of western Europe to
manufacturing and commercial enterprises. Colonisation, imperialism,
the opening up of new agricultural countries, is therefore the other
side of industrialism.

The present revolution in the world to-day is thus in a real sense a
sequel to the industrial revolution, which gave birth to our modern
industry. That imposing industry depends upon non-industrial
populations, who produce food, cotton, wood and copper, and exchange
them for manufactured goods. Since the people who fashion and
transport products must be fed by those who raise them, agricultural
production must be stimulated at home