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CHAPTER I

England's Colonial Secret

HE discovery, settlement, and expansion of America form merely one phase in the long and restless movement of mankind on the surface of the earth. When the curtain of authentic history first rose on the human scene, tribes, war bands, and armies had already seared plains and valleys with their trails and roads and launched their boats on the trackless seas. Viewed from a high point in time, the drama of the races seems to be little more than a record of migrations and shifting civilizations, with their far-reaching empires-Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Abyssinian, Athenian, Roman, Mongol, Turkish, 3

and Manchu-as fleeting periods of apparent pause and concentration in the universal flow of things.

It was not without some warrant, perhaps, that one of the very earliest Greek philosophers, Anaximander, more than five centuries before the Christian era, reached the startling conclusion that the cosmos which he beheld with penetrating eyes was a limitless flood, ever in motion, throwing up new forms and beings and drawing them again into its devouring immensity according to the law of destiny -whirling worlds, swaying tides, growing crops, wandering herds, puny man, and his little systems erected proudly for a day against eternity being but symbols of an unchanging force, the essence of all reality. Conceived even in terms of modern mathematics, a purely mechanistic philosophy is engaging in its simplicity, but we are warned by one recent historian, Henry Adams, that mere motion cannot account for direction or for the problems of vital energy; and by another, Oswald Spengler, that "there is an organic logic, an instinctive, dream-sure logic of all existence, as opposed to the logic of the inorganic, the logic of understanding and of things understood-a logic of direction as against a logic of extension."

More than two thousand years after Anaximander, in the nineteenth century, the German philosopher, Hegel, seeking the solution to the endless changes of history, came to the conclusion that the evolution of humanity was, in its inmost nature, the progressive revelation of the divine spirit. Assuming, as necessary, God the unconditioned, creator and upholder of all, Hegel saw in the kaleidoscopic time-patterns of civilization, strewn through the ages, mere partial reflections of the grand Idea underlying the universe "an infinite power realizing its aim in the absolute rational design of the world." Nations rising and declining were to him but pawns in a majestic game, each with its mission to fulfill, with its heroes as servants of their epochs carrying out that aspect of the Idea then fated for realization.

And according to this philosopher, the chosen method of the Absolute was movement by thesis, antithesis, and synthesis: every system, every concept, every situation calling forth from the vasty deep its opposite, its challenge; the conflict of the two finally reaching a reconciling synthesis or solution. Though logic would seem to imply that change must be unbroken in the future as in the past, Hegel in fact announced that the goal of the long process had been reached in Germany and the Prussian monarchy: God had labored through the centuries to produce the ideal situation in which Hegel found himself. But that naïve conviction did not prevent his great hypothesis from affecting deeply the thought of the modern age. If historians, working with concepts less ambitious-with concrete relations rather than with ultimates-have been inclined in recent days to avoid the Hegelian creed, theologians and statesmen have continued to the latest hour to find in it the weight of telling argument.

Near the close of Hegel's century, a German economist, Werner Sombart, seeking the dynamic of imperialism, reduced the process to the terms of an everlasting struggle among human societies over feeding places on the wide surface of the earth and over the distribution of the world's natural resources. While this doctrine is too sweeping in its universality, it is not without illustrations. For three thousand years or more the clash of ancient races and empire builders had, as its goal, possession of the rich valleys of the Nile and the Euphrates, where food for congested populations could be won with ease and ruling classes could be readily founded on servile labor. Every one of the strong empires that rose in those fertile regions. and enjoyed a respite of security was in turn overwhelmed by a conquering horde which coveted its land and its accumulated wealth. The spoils of industry were the rewards. of valor. When the Athenian empire was at its height, no fewer than a thousand cities paid tribute to its treasury and a lucrative commerce, spread over the Mediterra

nean, swelled the opulence of its merchants. The age of Pericles had its price. The Carthaginian empire, embracing in its conquered area Northern Africa, Southern Spain, Corsica, Sardinia and half of Sicily, was first and foremost a trading state dominated by the idea of gathering from its subject provinces every particle of wealth that could be wrested from them by arms or squeezed out of them by monopoly.

Before the sword of Rome rich Carthage fell. When the two powers came face to face on the soil of Sicily, it was the hope of gain as well as fear of death that carried the vote for war in the Roman assembly. For this we have the authority of Polybius: "The military men told the people that they would get important material benefits from it." In this simple flash is revealed the powerful passion that drove the armies of the Republic beyond the borders of Italy and at length in many centuries of almost ceaseless aggression extended the empire of Rome to the sands of Arabia and to the snows of Scotland. Perhaps, as that modern pro-consul, Lord Curzon, has said by way of justification, the dominant motive was a search for "defensible frontiers"-something not yet found by any military commander anywhere on the globe. Still the noble lord had to confess in the same breath that Rome, having conquered a world, regarded her provinces "solely from the point of view of revenue." Varus, who was sent out a poor man to govern Syria, amassed a million in two years.

When Rome had grasped more than she could defend, her fair cities and fertile fields became spoils of victory for the German barbarians that had long beaten against her borders. For two hundred years at least the civilization of the Mediterranean world was at the mercy of migratory Teutons. Finally there were no more Roman provinces to seize; then feudal war lords employed their acquisitive talents for the next thousand years in fighting one another over manors and towns, pausing occasionally to unite against the Moslem, who threatened them.

all with destruction. When, eventually, out of this struggle emerged five states-Spain, Portugal, France, Holland, and England-strong enough in armed might and rich enough in treasure to engage in larger enterprise, fortune opened for them, first, the Atlantic and then the world arena in which to deploy their unresting energies. As the grateful merchants of London long afterward carved on the tomb of William Pitt, that brilliant forerunner of modern imperialism, commerce was again united with war and made to flourish.

It was the age-old lure of substantial things that sent the path-breakers of the seas on their perilous journeysColumbus across the Atlantic in 1492 and da Gama around the Cape to India six years later. Their adventures were only novel incidents in the continuous search for riches. Centuries before, the Romans had carried on an immense commerce with the gorgeous East; in Oriental markets they gathered spices, silks, perfumes, and jewels for the fashionable shops of the Eternal City, and from their treasure chests poured a golden stream of specie to pay for these luxuries. In vain did the stern Roman moralists-Puritans of that time-cry out against the thoughtless maidens and proud dames who emptied their purses buying gauds and trinkets brought at such cost from the ends of the earth. When the Romans passed, their Teutonic heirs gazed upon the spoils of the East with the same fascination that had gripped the grand ladies of the Via Sacra. All through the middle ages a traffic in the luxuries of the Orient continued with increasing volume, enriching the Mohammedan and Italian merchants who served as brokers for the bazaars of the Indies and the shops of Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, Bruges, and London. If the risks of the overland journeys were great, the gains of the dangerous business.

were enormous.

Inevitably, therefore, an ardent desire to enlarge their profits by direct operations seized the traders of Europe, driving first the Italians, then the Spanish, Portuguese,