With vast stores of all the necessary
resources, amply equipped with capital, the country has entered the
field as the most dangerous rival that the other capitalist nations must
face. Possessed of everything, including the means of providing a navy
of any reasonable size and an army of any necessary number, the United
States looms as the dominating economic factor in the capitalist world.

Imperial policy is frequently bold, rough and at times frankly brutal
and unjust. Where subject peoples and weaker neighbors submit to the
dictates of the ruling power there is no friction. But where the subject
peoples or smaller states attempt to assert their rights of
self-determination or of independence, the empire acts as Great Britain
has acted in Ireland and in India; as Italy and France have acted in
Africa; as Japan has acted in Korea; as the United States has acted in
the Philippines, in Hayti, in Nicaragua, and in Mexico.

Plain men do not like these things. Animated by the belief in popular
rights which is so prevalent among the western peoples, the masses
resent imperial atrocities. Therefore it becomes necessary to surround
imperial action with such an atmosphere as will convince the man on the
street that the acts are necessary or else that they are inevitable.

When the Church and the State stood together the Czar and the Kaiser
spoke for God as well as for the financial interests. There was thus a
double sanction--imperial necessity coupled with divine authority.
Those who were not willing to accept the necessity felt enough reverence
for the authority to bow their heads in submission to whatever policy
the masters of empire might inaugurate.

The course of empire upon which the United States has embarked involves
a complete departure from all of the most cherished traditions of the
American people. Economic, political and social theories must all be
thrust aside. Liberty, equality and fraternity must all be forgotten and
in their places must be erected new standards of imperial purpose that
are acceptable to the economic and political masters of present day
American life.

The American people have been taught the language of liberty. They
believe in freedom for self-determination. Their own government was born
as a protest against imperial tyranny and they glory in its origin and
speak proudly of its revolutionary background. Americans are still
individualists. Their lives and thoughts both have been
provinci