The United States entered the war to check the progress of the autocratic imperialism of Germany.

Before the War began in July, 1914, the socialist parties of Europe were divided between moderates who were willing to accept welfare-state reforms and allow the grab-and-keep structure of monopoly capitalism to continue in authority, and revolutionaries who demanded the abolition of capitalist imperialism and its replacement by socialism.

But Austria was Catholic and Prussia was Protestant; and had Austria succeeded, Germany possibly to-day would have been united under an irresistible Catholic imperialism, and there would have been no German empire whose capital is Berlin.

We can, if we choose, cut off Germany altogether from these vital economic necessities, if she does not consent to abandon militant imperialism for some more civilized form of government.

But in the general mind of the British peoples the movement of opinion from a narrow imperialism towards internationalism has been wide and swift.

There is quite naturally a sustained opposition to it in all the fastnesses of aggressive imperialism.

And so the discussion of the future of the overseas "empires" brings us again to the same realisation to which the discussion of nearly every great issue arising out of this war has pointed, the realisation of the imperative necessity of some great council or conference, some permanent overriding body, call it what you will, that will deal with things more broadly than any "nationalism" or "patriotic imperialism" can possibly do.

But no ending to this war, no sort of settlement, will destroy the antipathy of the civilised peoples for the violent, pretentious, sentimental and cowardly imperialism that has so far dominated Germany.

To set about organizing that League now, with its necessary repudiation on the part of Britain, France, and Italy, of a selfish and, it must be remembered in the light of these things I have but hinted at here, a now hopelessly unpracticable imperialism, would, I am convinced, lead quite rapidly to a great change of heart in Germany and to a satisfactory peace.

But no ending to this war, no sort of settlement, will destroy the antipathy of the civilised peoples for the violent, pretentious, sentimental and cowardly imperialism that has so far dominated Germany.

The gist of all the arguments in favor of the revolution is: better imperialism than an oligarchy of corrupt nobles.

For the middle class the transition to modern capitalism, and for the feudal lords the way to Western imperialism, was easy.

"Armed imperialism, such as the men conceived who were but yesterday the masters of Germany, is at an end, its illicit ambitions engulfed in black disaster.

It is the clear common sense of the African situation that while these precious regions of raw material remain divided up between a number of competitive European imperialisms, each resolutely set upon the exploitation of its "possessions" to its own advantage and the disadvantage of the others, there can be no permanent peace in the world.

No doubt we have already a literature of liberal imperialism and a considerable accumulation of declarations by this statesman or that.

She had for decades assumed at sea the same dictatorial attitude as France had maintained upon land under Louis XIV. and Napoleon I. The years 1870-1871 broke the French spell; the year 1884 has shown England that the times of her maritime imperialism also are over, and that if she does not renounce it of her own free will, an 1870 will come for the English spell too.

The number of those taking arms against the medieval imperialism of Berlin was constantly growing greater, and the German refugees, finally convinced that their wait was going to be a very long one, were scattering themselves through the interior of the state, hunting a more satisfying and less expensive existence.