Page:Justice in war time by Russell, Bertrand.djvu/54

28 of the savage and contrast them with the gilded corruption of courts, nevertheless had no scruple in thrusting the noble savage out from his North-American hunting grounds. And we cannot at this date bring ourselves to condemn the process by which the American continent has been acquired for European civilisation. In order that such wars may be justified, it is necessary that there should be a very great and undeniable difference between the civilisation of the colonisers and that of the dispossessed natives. It is necessary, also, that the climate should be one in which the invading race can flourish. When these conditions are satisfied the conquest becomes justified, though actual fighting against the dispossessed inhabitants ought, of course, to be avoided as far as is compatible with colonising. Many humane people will object in theory to the justification of this form of robbery, but I do not think that any practical or effective objection is likely to be made.

Such wars, however, belong now to the past. The regions where the white man live are all allotted, either to white races or to yellow races to whom the white man is not clearly superior, and whom, in any case, he is not strong enough to expel. Apart from small punitive expeditions, wars of colonisation, in the true sense, are no longer possible. What are nowadays called colonial wars do not aim at the complete occupation of a country by a conquering race; they aim only at securing certain governmental and trading advantages. They belong, in fact, rather with what I call wars of prestige than with wars of colonisation in the old sense. There are, it is true, a few rare exceptions. The Greeks in the second Balkan