g as the love of power for its own sake. It is known in
individuals, and it is known in States, and it is the most disastrous, if
not the most evil, of the human passions. The modern German philosophy of
the State turns almost exclusively upon this idea; and here, as elsewhere,
by giving to a passion an intellectual form, the Germans have magnified
its force and enhanced its monstrosity. But the passion itself is not
peculiar to Germans, nor is it only they to whom it is and has been a
motive of State. Power has been the fetish of kings and emperors from the
beginning of political history, and it remains to be seen whether it will
not continue to inspire democracies. The passion for empire ruined the
Athenian democracy, no less than the Spartan or the Venetian oligarchy,
or the Spain of Philip II, or the France of the Monarchy and the Empire.
But it still makes its appeal to the romantic imagination. Its intoxication
has lain behind this war, and it will prompt many others if it survives,
when the war is over, either in the defeated or the conquering nations.
It is not only the jingoism of Germany that Europe has to fear. It is
the jingoism that success may make supreme in any country that may be
victorious.

But while power may be sought for its own sake, it is commonly sought
by modern States as a means to wealth. It is the pursuit of markets and
concessions and outlets for capital that lies behind the colonial policy
that leads to wars. States compete for the right to exploit the weak, and
in this competition Governments are prompted or controlled by financial
interests. The British went to Egypt for the sake of the bondholders, the
French to Morocco for the sake of its minerals and wealth. In the Near East
and the Far it is commerce, concessions, loans that have led to the rivalry
of the Powers, to war after war, to "punitive expeditions" and--irony of
ironies!--to "indemnities" exacted as a new and special form of robbery
from peoples who rose in the endeavour to defend themselves against
robbery. The Powers combine for a moment to suppress the common victim,
the next they are at one another's throats over the spoil. That really is
the simple fact about the quarrels of States over colonial and commercial
policy. So long as the exploitation of undeveloped countries is directed by
companies having no object in view except dividends, so long as financiers
prompt the policy of Governments, so long as military expeditions