The root disease that afflicts the world at the present day is the supremacy of the commercial point of view. Intercourse and exchange of products is no doubt desirable. The education of backward peoples in agriculture and in industry for their own good and along their own line is indispensable. The fallacy of the commercial mind consists in erecting the means into the paramount end, in brusquing the love of independence which is so strongly entrenched, even among many primitive peoples, and in preventing their development in the direction prescribed by their own natures. All this for the sake of the immediate increase of material wealth. The white race shall have the lion’s share of the wealth; the native population are to be accorded a lesser share, with which they must be content. This is the extent of the concession to humanity. This is, in plain words, what is signified by the haughty phrase—“the spread of civilization.” The commercial mind is neither benevolent nor malevolent—as little as science is. It seems at times to be beneficent; at other times it seems to be almost fiendish—as in the case of the atrocities perpetrated on the Congo. It is not fiendish, it is simply ethically neutral or blind. From this series of reflections, certain conclusions may be drawn as to fundamental points of view relating to international law. The main principle is respect for the total personality of peoples, recognition of them as potential members of the spiritual body of mankind. The territory of a people is to be regarded as the body of that people’s soul. Their independence is to be strictly respected. Expropriation or annexation is to be characterized as outrage. Intrusion, except for purposes of education, is to be forbidden. The conception which underlies the scramble for Africa and for the Far East—that the material interests of the advanced nations entitle them to force the backward to become receptacles of the industrial overflow of the West, the producers of raw material for the factories of the West must be abandoned.[98]