FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS OF POLITICS 291 



The events that have given character to the period are so recent and 

 familiar as not to need detailed recital. The broad principle that 

 has underlain them is that the nation, perfected through the sup- 

 pression of individualism and of federalism, must break the bonds 

 of ethnic and geographic homogeneity and project its beneficent 

 influence into the world at large. Such, at all events, is the philo- 

 sophic theory of the movement. The practical aspects of the opera- 

 tion have, of course, been of a rather less exalted nature. The 

 impulse has come from the demand for markets on the part of the 

 highly stimulated industries of Germany and the United States. 

 It was in the eighties that the Germans instituted that picturesque 

 world- wide hunt for colonial lands that gave such a shock to Great 

 Britain and such amusement to the rest of mankind. It was in the 

 early nineties that Africa was parceled out, with a brave paraphernalia 

 of " spheres of influence " and " hinterlands ;: for the parcelers, 

 but with no sign of respect for ethnic and geographic unity among 

 the parceled. Three years later the unmistakable ambition of the 

 American people to manifest their power beyond their national 

 boundaries was thwarted, though with great difficulty, by President 

 Cleveland; but in 1895 he also gave way, and by his Venezuelan 

 message unchained the passions and aspirations which found a 

 temporary satisfaction in the incidents and results of the war with 

 Spain. The United States, the most perfect type of advanced 

 democracy and nationalism, entered fully upon the task of govern- 

 ing distant and hopelessly alien peoples by the methods of autocracy. 

 In the movement for the final partition of Asia into spheres of influ- 

 ence for the European powers a movement to which the indomit- 

 able will and energy of one brave little Asiatic people have raised up 

 an obstacle which at the present moment seems likely to be insup- 

 erable - - the great American Republic has taken a recognized part 

 as a regulating, if not a promoting, factor. There no longer remains 

 one first-class nation whose conscious aim is rather internal per- 

 fection than external dominion - - not one that does not see in de- 

 pendencies the indispensable proof of political competence. Under 

 such circumstances it needs no exalted intelligence to see that con- 

 stitutionalism and nationalism have been definitively superseded 

 as controlling dogmas in the world's politics. 



What, now, is the meaning of this new imperialism? Is there in it 

 anything really new? Is it any different from the imperialism of 

 Athens in the days of Pericles or the imperialism of Rome under the 

 late republic? Has it for its underlying principle anything different 

 from that proclaimed by Machiavelli, that no state, whether mon- 

 archic or popular, can live a peaceful and quiet life, but each must 

 either conquer or be conquered? Or anything other than the doc- 

 trine of the doughty Thomas Hobbes, transferred from individual 



