twenty millions who have
been added to Germany's population since the war had had to depend on
their country's political conquest they would have had to starve. What
feeds them are countries which Germany has never "owned" and never
hopes to "own"; Brazil, Argentina, the United States, India, Australia,
Canada, Russia, France, and England. (Germany, which never spent a mark
on its political conquest, to-day draws more tribute from South America
than does Spain, which has poured out mountains of treasure and oceans
of blood in its conquest.) These are Germany's real colonies. Yet the
immense interests which they represent, of really primordial concern to
Germany, without which so many of her people would be actually without
food, are for the diplomats and the soldiers quite secondary ones; the
immense trade which they represent owes nothing to the diplomat, to
Agadir incidents, to Dreadnoughts; it is the unaided work of the
merchant and the manufacturer. All this diplomatic and military
conflict and rivalry, this waste of wealth, the unspeakable foulness
which Tripoli is revealing, are reserved for things which both sides to
the quarrel could sacrifice, not merely without loss, but with profit.
And Italy, whose statesmen have been faithful to all the old "axioms"
(Heaven save the mark!) will discover it rapidly enough. Even her
defenders are ceasing now to urge that she can possibly derive any real
benefit from this colossal ineptitude.

Italy struck at Turkey for "honor," for prestige--for the purpose of
impressing Europe. And one may hope that Europe (after reading the
reports of Reuter, _The Times_, the _Daily Mirror_, and the New York
_World_ as to the methods which Italy is using in vindicating her
"honor") is duly impressed, and that Italian patriots are satisfied
with these new glories added to Italian history. It is all they will
get.

Or rather, will they get much more: for Italy, as unhappily for the
balance of Europe, the substance will be represented by the increase of
very definite every-day difficulties--the high cost of living, the
uncertainty of employment, the very deep problems of poverty,
education, government, well-being. These remain--worsened. And
this--not the spectacular clash of arms, or even the less spectacular
killing of unarmed Arab men, women, and children--constitute the real
"struggle for life among men." But the dilettanti of "high politics"
are not interested. For those who still take