Economic conquest has become a necessity for Germany. Transformed into
an industrial State, it no longer produces its own food. Since 1885 its
imports have exceeded its exports by 1,353,000,000 marks. Whence did
Germany derive these 1,300,000,000 marks which were needed, good year
and bad, to meet its balance of trade? It owes them to its maritime
commerce and the revenue of its capital invested abroad. Its maritime
commerce then must augment and must triumph over all competition. At
every cost it must open for itself outlets for its industrial products
in order to buy foodstuffs which it does not produce sufficiently. If
not, famine.
Let us see now how the complicated play of all these social forces and
the effect of this economic situation have been embodied in formulas,
what has been its intellectual expression.
This is no idle question, for men have always claimed to be guided by
ideas, and generally they are, but they rarely know where their ideas
come from or in what they consist. Without intellectual expression
imperialism would not have extended to all the classes of society. The
passion of economic conquest did not prevail throughout the whole of
Germany. The bourgeois in the Liberal provinces, the corps of officers,
the corps of teachers, the clergy were refractory to it.
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