emon oil, etc."[11]

In estimating the value of the economic gains to an imperialistic
nation, a moralist might be inclined to introduce other factors. The
problem whether a political subjection, which is of the essence of
imperialism, is or is not justified raises an uncomfortable question in
ethics. However carefully native rights are safe-guarded, these
subject races are forced to obey a foreign will not primarily for their
own good but for that of the sovereign power. Several industrial
nations, above all the United States and in second instance, England,
have undoubtedly embarked upon imperialism with a truly missionary zeal
for the welfare of the natives. On the other hand, the twentieth
century outrages in the Congo were almost as bad as the cruelties of
the Conquistadores in Hispaniola and Peru. Even in well-governed
countries, like Egypt, the introduction of European legal systems has
resulted in the expropriation of innumerable small property-holders,
while the increase in population, due to better economic and {93}
sanitary arrangements, has led to an intensification of misery. To
what extent the average _fellah_ of Egypt is better off than under the
reign of Mehemet Ali or of Ismail, how much the Jamaican poor are more
prosperous than the poor of Haiti is at best an unpromising inquiry.
On the whole, there has doubtless been improvement. In Africa
slave-catching has been abolished, and famine and pestilence
circumscribed. But the gain such as it is, has been in the main
incidental, the by-product of an exploitation primarily for the benefit
of others.[12]

Yet however we discuss the moral question, the problem is determined by
quite other considerations. So long as hundreds of millions in the
industrial countries require and demand that these backward countries
be utilised, humanitarian laws will not be allowed to interfere with
the main economic purpose of the colonies. The imperialistic argument
is always the same: the resources of the world must be unlocked. Three
hundred thousand Indians must not be permitted to occupy a land capable
of maintaining three hundred millions of civilised people.[13] {94} The
earth and the fulness thereof belong to the inhabitants of the earth,
and if the product is somewhat unevenly divided, that, the imperialists
assert, is hardly to be avoided. Back of the ethical argument lie
necessity and power. Let the backward countries be exploited with the
utmost speed