Some of the underlying causes of the horrible catastrophe the American people are now watching from afar are commercial and economic.  Imperial Germany’s desire for colonies in other continents—­such as Great Britain and France secured earlier as a result of keen commercial ambitions—­is intense.  Prussia’s seizure of Schleswig in 1864-5 had the commercial motive; and it is with visions of ports on the North Sea that Germany justifies her present occupation of Belgium.  The Russians have for generations desired to extend their national territory southward to the Aegean and the Bosphorus, and eastward to good harbors on the Pacific.  Later they pushed into Mongolia and Manchuria, but were resisted successfully by Japan.  Austria-Hungary has long been seeking ports on the Adriatic, and lately seized without warrant Herzegovina and Bosnia to promote her approach toward the Aegean, and is now trying to seize Servia with the same ends in view.  With similar motives Italy lately descended on Tripoli, without any excuse except this intense desire for colonies—­profitable or unprofitable.  On the other hand, the American people, looking to the future as well as to the past, object to acquisitions of new territory by force of arms; and since the twentieth century opened they have twice illustrated in their own practice—­first in Cuba, and then in Mexico—­this democratic objection.  They believe that extensions of national territory should be brought about only with the indubitable consent of the majority of the people most nearly concerned.  They also believe that commerce should always be a means of promoting good-will, and not ill-will, among men, and that all legitimate and useful extensions of the commerce of a manufacturing and commercial nation may be procured through the policy of the “open door”—­which means nothing more than that all nations should be allowed to compete on equal terms for the trade of any foreign people, whether backward or advanced in civilization.  No American Administration has accepted a “concession” of land in China.  They also believe that peaceable extensions of territory and trade will afford adequate relief from the economic pressure on a population too large for the territory it occupies, and that there is no need of forcible seizure of territory to secure relief.  It is inevitable, therefore, that the American people should hope that one outcome of the present war should be—­no enlargement of a national territory by force or without the free consent of the population to be annexed, and no colonization except by peaceable commercial and industrial methods.

Aggressive Force a Failure.