several years in the West—as if a treaty with a native chief, who might be bribed or coerced into lending his signature, could be the foundation of moral right to the territory occupied by his tribe. The European nations artfully employed the fictions of sovereignty in order to varnish their acts of plunder with a semblance of legality. Of course these proclamations and treaties were not intended to justify exploitation in the eyes of the natives—the natives were not consulted or regarded—but rather to base thereon the division of the spoils between the exploiters. A proclamation or the conclusion of a treaty with a chief was notice given to rivals not to interfere with the spoils reserved for the nation that had issued the proclamation or secured the treaty. It meant “hands off” to competing exploiters. If it be asked whether this picture is not too dark? Whether the civilized nations of the twentieth century in their dealings with the helpless natives were merely selfish? Whether their motives are so sinister? Whether they are not animated by better, more moral aims? the answer is that the commercial mind, and it is the commercial mind that chiefly rules the world today, allays its scruples and justifies its aggressions by the fallacy that to extend trade is to spread civilization, and to spread civilization is to contribute to the advancement of the human race. The interests of trade and of civilization are simply identified. To build railroads, to stretch telegraph lines across the Dark Continent, to launch steamboats on lakes that never heard the whistle of a steam engine before, these are assumed to be the evidences of “progress.” Besides are not the natives disciplined in habits of industry, are they not encouraged to cultivate the raw products needed by Europe, and in return to receive the overflow of European markets? The instruments of civilization are thus confounded with civilization itself; the means with the end; while the real object, veiled by sophistry, is nevertheless the material benefit to be secured by the white race. Even the humane treatment of the natives, where it is humane, resembles somewhat too unpleasantly the fattening of the calf prior to its consumption by the owner. Furthermore, the interests of Trade being supposed to be paramount, it is held that any country the people of which do not sufficiently cultivate the products desired by other peoples, or who close their doors against the industrial surplus of Europe, may be annexed, the land forcibly seized, and the inhabitants subjugated, and moreover that such action is right and proper and in the interests of humanity. So long as this view obtains, there will be no peace on earth. The competition for foreign territories and foreign markets, the scramble between the “civilized” exploiters, will be indefinitely provocative of new wars.