olland, Belgium. Each year about a billion
dollars in English capital was invested outside of the British Isles.
Where did this wealth go? The chief objectives of British investment,
aside from the British Dominions and the United States, were (stated in
millions of pounds) Argentine 320; Brazil 148; Mexico 99; Russia 67;
France 8 and Germany 6. The wealth of Germany or France is greater than
that of Argentine, Brazil and Mexico combined, but Germany and France
were developed countries, producing enough surplus for their own needs,
and, therefore, the investable wealth of Great Britain went, not to her
rich neighbors, but to the poorer lands across the sea.

Each nation that produces an investable surplus--and in the nature of
the present economic system, every capitalist nation must some day reach
the point where it can no longer absorb its own surplus wealth--must
find some undeveloped country in which to invest its surplus. Otherwise
the continuity of the capitalist world is unthinkable. Great Britain,
Belgium, Holland, France, Germany and Japan all had reached this stage
before the war. The United States was approaching it rapidly.

3. _"Undeveloped Countries"_

Capitalism is so new that the active struggle to secure investment
opportunities in undeveloped countries is of the most recent origin. The
voyages which resulted in the discovery, by modern Europeans, of the
Americas, Australia, Japan, and an easy road to the Orient, were all
made within 500 years. The actual processes of capitalism are products
of the past 150 years in England, where they had their origin. In
France, Germany, Italy and Japan they have existed for less than a
century. The great burst of economic activity which has pushed the
United States so rapidly to the fore as a producer of surplus wealth
dates from the Civil War. Only in the last generation did there arise
the financial imperialism that results from the necessity of finding a
market for investable surplus.

The struggle for world trade had been waged for centuries before the
advent of capitalism, but the struggle for investment opportunities in
undeveloped countries is strictly modern. The matter is strikingly
stated by Amos Pinchot in his "Peace or Armed Peace" (Nov. 11, 1918).

"If you will look at the maps following page 554 of Hazen's 'Europe
since 1815,' or any other standard colored map showing Africa and Asia
in 1884, you will see that, but for a few rare spots of colorati