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 government or banking firm. An “incident” occurred. There were Europeans who made a trade of bringing on such incidents. National honor was offended; also, there was the debt. The army of the European power involved—sometimes bloodlessly, sometimes after a brief campaign—assumed the responsibilities of the native king. The debt was paid in time; but the European control remained. I describe here, and only as an example, one method among many.

When any given power so extended its “influence,” it tried to make that influence exclusive. It must have all the raw materials and all the markets which it cared to take. It must have all the rights to invest capital. When the European nation, for fear of its rivals, could not take over any undeveloped nation outright, it tried to bring it at least within its “sphere of influence”—a kind of half-control leading in time to full conquest. The critics of this system call it “financial imperialism.” For European diplomacy, backed by enormous armies, by great national banking houses, by munitions manufacturers, had become almost frankly commercial.

Diplomacy kept the long peace which this policy always endangered by a system borrowed from the eighteenth century and much improved in the nineteenth. “The Balance of Power” it used to be called; now it was termed “the Concert of the Powers.” Nations, led by the great powers, allied themselves in such manner as to keep the opposing