Page:The Economics of Unemployment.djvu/135

countries with degraded currencies and low exchange whose cheapened exports tend to absorb the restricted world-market.

Now while it would be absurd to press a purely economic interpretation upon this piece of history, converting the fears, hatreds, ambitions and follies that it exhibits into terms of economic greed and error, close observers and analysts of the Peace Treaties and the whole post-war policy generally agree that economic considerations relating to possession of coal and iron, oil, and the control of undeveloped economic resources, and the routes of access to them, were determinant factors in those decisions which have so much aggravated our present troubles. In a word, the badness of the Peace and post-war policy is mainly the badness of an Imperialism whose tap-root lies in a struggle for markets and for the areas of lucrative investment of surplus savings derived from profitable business enterprises in the highly developed industrial countries. The struggle of rival national Imperialisms has assumed an intensity and a variety of directions due to the political collapse of three great Empires and the immense prospects of spoils thus opened up. Not merely a redistribution of the spoils of Africa but a renewal of the far more important competition for the control and development of China occupy the vision of the keen-eyed financiers and business groups who, when they choose, control the foreign policy of every country.

Thus in the last resort international politics is mostly business and is therefore penetrated by the emotions and beliefs of the business world, not taken