Well, I put it to you, as a matter worth just a moment or two of consideration, that this conflict is about nothing of the sort; that it is about a perfectly futile matter, one which the immense majority of the German, English, French, Italian, and Turkish people could afford to treat with the completest indifference.  For, to the vast majority of these 250,000,000 people, more or less, it does not matter two straws whether Morocco or some vague, African swamp near the Equator is administered by German, French, Italian, or Turkish officials, so long as it is well administered.  Or rather one should go further:  if French, German, or Italian colonization of the past is any guide, the nation which wins in the conquest for territory of this sort has added a wealth-draining incubus.

This, of course, is preposterous; I am losing sight of the need for making provision for the future expansion of the race, of each party desiring to “find its place in the sun”; and heaven knows what.

Well, let us for a moment get away from phrases and examine a few facts usually ignored because they happen to be beneath our nose.

France has got a new empire, we are told; she has won a great victory; she is growing and expanding and is richer by something which her rivals are the poorer for not having.

Let us assume that she makes the same success of Morocco that she has made of her other possessions, of, say, Tunis, which represents one of the most successful of those operations of colonial expansion which have marked her history during the last forty years.  What has been the precise effect on French prosperity?

In thirty years, at a cost of many million sterling (it is part of successful colonial administration in France never to let it be known what the colonies really cost) France has founded in Tunis a colony, in which to-day there are, excluding soldiers and officials, about 25,000 genuine French colonists:  just the number by which the French population in France—­the real France—­is diminishing every six months!  And the value of Tunis as a market does not even amount to the sum which France spends directly on its occupation and administration, to say nothing of the indirect extension of military burden which its conquest involves; and, of course, the market which it represents would still exist in some form, though England—­or even Germany—­administered the country.

In other words, France loses twice every year in her home population two colonies equivalent to Tunis—­if we measure colonies in terms of communities made up of the race which has sprung from the mother country.  And yet, if once in a generation her rulers and diplomats can point to 25,000 Frenchmen living artificially and exotically under conditions which must in the long run be inimical to their race, it is pointed to as “expansion” and as evidence that France is maintaining her position as a Great Power.  A few years, as history goes, unless there is some