Page:The league of nations and primitive peoples (IA leagueofnationsp00oliviala).pdf/9

 What, then, was the vice of the politics of the 'scramble'? In regard to principle, it was the ignoring or the denial, in dealing with primitive peoples, of the conceptions of international (or 'super-national') Right ('Jus') which Christendom had evolved and asserted as between civilized peoples. The history of that break-down is too long to be sketched here. It was unquestionably affected by the ancient and quite logical claim of the Papacy to be the guardian and exponent of such Right, a claim which had indeed come to be interpreted, so far as primitive peoples were concerned, as implying responsibility rather for their spiritual than for their temporal security, but the revolt from which on the part of Protestant nations conduced to setting them to look elsewhere than to any general authority for their principles in dealing with such peoples, or indeed to ignore any principle whatever except that of their own wills and interests. This revolt helped competitive individualism and the doctrine of the Right of the stronger, in the struggle for life, to dominate international, as it had come to dominate industrial and social relations.

In regard to practice, their vice was the rapacity, cruelty, and stupidity of subjects and officers of the partitioning Powers in their dealings with natives, the impunity such agents were allowed and the support given to them by their Governments, and the reluctance of any Power to intervene or remonstrate.

The tropical lands that primitive peoples occupy yield, or are capable of yielding under organized and