Page:The New Protectionism.djvu/142

adventurous overflow of the savings of the capitalists of the developed Western countries, that constitutes the new and dominant factor in the modern situation. Larger and larger quantities of capital are available for overseas investment, and powerful, highly organized firms and groups of financiers seek to plant out these savings in distant lands, where they can be loaned to spendthrift monarchs or ambitious Governments, or applied to build railways, harbours, or other public works, to open and work mines, plant tea, rubber, or sugar, or to serve the general money lending operations which pass under the name of banking. Many hundreds of millions of pounds during recent years have been flowing from the creditor nations of Europe into this work of "development," which forms the main material ingredient in what is sometimes called the "march," sometimes the "mission," of civilization among backward peoples.

It is the competition between groups of