As for South Africa, “however ignorantly [our] politicians may argue about it, reviling one another from the one side as brigands, and defending themselves from the other with quibbles about waste-paper treaties and childish slanders against a brave enemy, the fact remains that a Great Power, consciously or unconsciously, must govern in the interests of civilisation as a whole; and it is not to those interests that such mighty forces as gold-fields, and the formidable armaments that can be built upon them, should be wielded irresponsibly by small communities of frontiersmen.  Theoretically they should be internationalised, not British-Imperialised; but until the Federation of the World becomes an accomplished fact we must accept the most responsible Imperial federations available as a substitute for it” (pp. 23-4).

As however the Manifesto was designed for the general election, this theme was only sketched, and the greater part was occupied with matters of a more immediately practicable character.  The proposed partition of China at that time seemed imminent, and our attention had been called to the efficiency of the German State organisation of foreign trade in comparison with the laissez-faire policy which dominated our Foreign Office.  We regarded our overseas trade as a national asset, and urged that the consular service should be revolutionised.  “Any person who thinks this application of Socialism to foreign trade through the consular system impossible also thinks the survival of his country in the age of the Powers impossible.  No German thinks it impossible.  If he has not already achieved it, he intends to” (pp. 10, 11).  We must “have in every foreign market an organ of commercially disinterested industrial intelligence.  A developed consulate would be such an organ.”  “The consulate could itself act as broker, if necessary, and have a revenue from commissions, of which, however, the salaries of its officials should be strictly independent” (pp. 10 and 8).

The present army should be replaced “by giving to the whole male population an effective training in the use of arms without removing them from civil life.  This can be done without conscription or barrack life” by extending the half-time system to the age of 21 and training the young men in the other half.  From the millions of men thus trained “we could obtain by voluntary enlistment a picked professional force of engineers, artillery, and cavalry, and as large a garrison for outlying provinces as we chose to pay for, if we made it attractive by the following reforms”:  full civil rights, a living wage, adequate superannuation after long service, and salaries for officers on the civil scale.  The other reforms advocated included a minimum wage for labour, grants in aid for housing, freedom for municipal trading, municipal public-houses, and reorganisation of the machinery of education, as explained later.  “The moral of it all is that what the British Empire wants most urgently in its government is not Conservatism, not Liberalism, not Imperialism, but brains and political science” (p. 93).