64 THE CLASS STRUGGLE SOCIALISTS AND WAR 65 develop chauvinistic Imperialism. cannot here repeat Boudin convincing argument at length. It may, however, be briefly epitomized thus: Hats, shoes and calicoes can be sold under any old flag. Steel rails, steel ships, steam engines and structural iron tend rather to follow the flag of their nativity, or if they precede it they show a marked preference for territory over which floats a flag that never fails to salute with servile alacrity their natal emblem.
In developing this argument he shows that the statistics of pig iron production furnish a roughly accurate barometer of the growth of aggressive militarism. On page 124 of his book he prints a statistical table showing the pig iron production in long tons of the principal producing countries of Europe. From that table we learn that in 1912 Germany and Austria Hungary together produced more pig, iron than Great Britain, France, Russia and Belgium. But not only was the production in Germany so vast (more than double that of Great Britain. but it was growing at an appallingly rapid rate. Thus, in the twelve years from 1900 to 1912 it had more than doubled, while that of Great Britain during the same period had actually fallen off more than 100, 000 tons.
So that while chauvinistic imperialism was growing so alarmingly in Germany, the tide had already begun to recede in Great Britain. And it is a matter of common notoriety that the England of the past five years has been much less imperialistic than the England of Cecil Rhodes and Joseph Chamberlain in which Kipling sang of The White Man Burden.
The typical spiritual manifestation of iron begotten imperialism is an unfaltering faith in the superiority of the Culture of the great pig iron producing Nation, together with a scathing contempt for the cultures of all other nations. For the Destiny of the Nation is, in Boudin words, to diffuse its culture among the nations, exterminating the cultures which it may find opposing its own, so as to bring dominion to the only true Culture, for the greater glory of God. In order to accomplish its mission from which it is mortal offense to shrink the Chosen People must seek to subdue the entire world politically and dominate it economically. For experience has shown that Culture follows the flag. History teaches us this lesson: that inferior races or nations, whether white or colored, fail to appreciate the beauties of a higher culture, and are utterly unable to acquire it even passively, unless and until they have been forcibly placed under the political tutelage and economic domination of the superior race whose culture is to be extended. In this connection it must be remembered that its language is a nation most characteristically national means of expression. In fact it is part of its own flesh and blood and possesses some of those very mystic qualities which constitute the essence of the national character and the basis of its special Culture. The most potent means therefore of spreading the culture of any given nation among alien peoples is to make them use the language of that nation.
But that can only be done when the nation of the higher Culture politically dominates the peoples among whom this Culture is to be spread. And in this material world of ours political dominion is inseparable from economic dominion. Hence the cultural mission of the Nation becomes of necessity a striving to dominate the entire world economically and politically a striving for World Empire.
There you have Boudin masterly delineation of the spirit of the German people, or at least of the dominant forces of the German Nation. And it is and was that spirit behind the German war machine which made it such a deadly menace to the cultural heritage of the human race. No such spirit lurked behind the British navy.
May disgress long enough to say that these imperialistic spiritual qualities the belief that one is the sacred bearer of a higher Culture, and that all other cultures are beneath contempt are the very hall mark of the Marxian Socialist everywhere? Who that has ever sat in an International Socialist Convention has not been conscious of the amusing and insulting contempt exuding from every pore of the majority of the German delegates? What has hindered the growth of Socialism more than the contempt for those who differed from