402 COLONIAL ADMINISTRATION 



must, in our relations with them, be governed by the inherent laws 

 of our own rational nature. An attempt to act otherwise would 

 imply a claim to the wisdom of providence in ordering the destinies 

 of alien races. But we are on safer grounds when we conclude that 

 we are entitled to do what is natural to our own civilization and 

 what its character demands, and as long as we do not depart from 

 its principles in our intercourse with other races, we shall not have 

 to reproach ourselves, at any rate, with having deserted the only 

 clear guide we have. 



Colonial expansion must first be judged from the point of view of 

 the needs of our own civilization. To what extent is it a normal 

 result of those forces which constitute the civilization of the West? 

 The conception that the whole movement is undertaken in an unself- 

 ish spirit in order to help the less fortunate races cannot be seriously 

 considered. Nations that have so many unsolved problems at home 

 would be stultifying themselves by trying to straighten out the diffi- 

 culties of others. Unless a vital need of our own civilization for this 

 very expansion and interference with other races can be shown, it 

 cannot claim any justification on humanitarian grounds, because we 

 have no way of proving that our interference with others will be 

 necessarily beneficial to them. When we inquire what are the truly 

 essential characteristics of our civilization which distinguish it from 

 all others, we shall perhaps find in the last analysis that they are 

 mobility, concentration, and mastery over the forces of nature. In 

 no other society are the individual members so independent, so able 

 to move within the social body, to determine their own development, 

 and to bring their energies to bear in a variety of places and manners. 

 No other society has so high a concentration of individual forces or 

 social ends. No other society has achieved so complete a mastery 

 over the productive and impellent forces of nature. Out of these 

 characteristics the expansion movement has naturally developed. It 

 was impossible to restrict the mobility of social forces to national 

 boundaries. Passing beyond, they for a time escaped social control, 

 and the action of the individual adventurers by no means always 

 redounded to the credit of civilization. It was found necessary to 

 follow them up and to bring social conscience and control to bear 

 upon them in the new regions which they had penetrated. The 

 principle of concentration naturally led to the demand that the new 

 regions whose resources were being opened up should be brought into 

 close relations with the national industrial life to which they are 

 subsidiary. Finally, the great problems of the control and utiliza- 

 tion of the vast productive forces of the new continents invited the 

 ability trained in the narrower European field to prove its mettle 

 in coping with greater difficulties. 



It has been urged that since the characteristic mark of modern 



