ich produce them should be
brought under efficient administration. The anarchy of primitive
barbarism cannot be allowed to stand in the way of access to these
vital necessities of the new world-economy. It is merely futile for
well-meaning sentimentalists to talk of the wickedness of invading the
inalienable rights of the primitive occupants of these lands: for good
or for ill, the world has become a single economic unit, and its
progress cannot be stopped out of consideration for the time-honoured
usages of uncivilised and backward tribes. Of course it is our duty to
ensure that these simple folks are justly treated, led gently into
civilisation, and protected from the iniquities of a mere ruthless
exploitation, such as, in some regions, we have been compelled to
witness. But Western civilisation has seized the reins of the world,
and it will not be denied. Its economic needs drive it to undertake the
organisation of the whole world. What we have to secure is that its
political principles shall be such as will ensure that its control will
be a benefit to its subjects as well as to itself. But the development
of scientific industry has made European control and civilised
administration inevitable throughout the world.

It did not, however, necessarily follow from these premises that the
great European states which did not already possess extra-European
territories were bound to acquire such lands. So far as their purely
economic needs were concerned, it would have been enough that they
should have freedom of access, on equal terms with their neighbours, to
the sources of the supplies they required. It is quite possible, as
events have shown, for a European state to attain very great success in
the industrial sphere without possessing any political control over the
lands from which its raw materials are drawn, or to which its finished
products are sold. Norway has created an immense shipping industry
without owning a single port outside her own borders. The manufactures
of Switzerland are as thriving as these of any European country, though
Switzerland does not possess any colonies. Germany herself, the loudest
advocate of the necessity of political control as the basis of economic
prosperity, has found it possible to create a vast and very prosperous
industry, though her colonial possessions have been small, and have
contributed scarcely at all to her wealth. Her merchants and
capitalists have indeed found the most prof