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, leading
up to annexations, are undertaken behind the back of the public for reasons
that cannot be avowed, so long will the nations end with war, where they
have begun by theft, and so long will thousands and millions of innocent
and generous lives, the best of Europe, be thrown away to no purpose,
because, in the dark, sinister interests have been risking the peace
of the world for the sake of money in their pockets.
It is these tremendous underlying facts and tendencies that suggest the
true moral of this war. It is these that have to be altered if we are to
avoid future wars on a scale as great.
18. _The Settlement_.
And now, with all this in our minds, let us turn to consider the vexed
question of the settlement after the war. There lies before the Western
world the greatest of all choices, the choice between destruction and
salvation. But that choice does not depend merely on the issue of the
war.
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