Page:Gilbert Keith Chesterton - How to Help Annexation (1918).djvu/11

 Rh flooded them with soldiers. It did not base its argument on what might happen forty years afterwards; or announce itself unanimously elected by the votes of a multitude of babes unborn. But though the principle of the imperialist settlement in Africa was more democratic than that of the internationalist settlement of Alsace, it contained this same unique falsity, which must necessarily be the fountain of any number of such annexations. It used the fact of unfairly colonising a country as a reason for unjustly conquering it. Once admit that principle, and there need be no end to such colonisations and conquests, so long as they are conducted by powers with rich resources, with large populations and especially (if they are to be specially lucky in such work) with reactionary constitutions.

Now anybody who will look at the modern world with his eyes open will know perfectly well that this sort of expansion and progress is one to which the modern world is especially prone. In every quarter of the globe, especially in South America and Africa, there is a perpetual pressure of colonial ambition which would at any moment take advantage of this principle. Germany especially is known to keep herds of tame exiles browsing on foreign pastures; and the mere counting of so much head of such cattle could always create this sort of international quarrel. The worst version of the South African War will only make it a mere sample of the sort of claim which the more plutocratic powers will always be ready to push, where there is any sort of cosmopolitan confusion. What the principle would have meant touching Asiatic