An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its PerpetuationVeblen, Thorstein
Philosophy
An Inquiry into the Nature of Peace and the Terms of Its Perpetuation
Veblen, Thorstein
Peace; World War, 1914-1918 -- Peace
well-advised economy of resources would dictate for the prospective
German usufruct of the Western nations.
There is the essential difference between the two cases that while Japan
is over-populated, so that it becomes the part of a wise government to
find additional lands for occupancy, and that so it is constrained by its
imperial ambitions to displace much of the population in its subject
territories, the Fatherland on the other hand is under-populated--
notoriously, though not according to the letter of the diplomatic
parables on this head--and for the calculable future must continue to be
under-populated; provided that the state of the industrial arts
continues subject to change in the same general direction as hitherto,
and provided that no radical change affects the German birth-rate. So,
since the Imperial government has no need of new lands for occupancy by
its home population, it will presumably be under no inducement to take
measures looking to the partial depopulation of its subject territories.
The case of Belgium and the measures looking to a reduction of its
population may raise a doubt, but probably not a well taken doubt. It is
rather that since it has become evident that the territory can not be
held, it is thought desirable to enrich the Fatherland with whatever
property can be removed, and to consume the accumulated man-power of the
Belgian people in the service of the war. It would appear that it is a
war-measure, designed to make use of the enemy's resources for his
defeat. Indeed, under conditions of settled occupation or subjection,
any degree of such depopulation would entail an economic loss, and any
well-considered administrative policy would therefore look to the
maintenance of the inhabitants of the acquired territories in
undiminished numbers and unimpaired serviceability.
The resulting scheme of Imperial usufruct should accordingly be of a
considerate, not to say in effect humane, character,--always provided
that the requisite degree of submission and subservience ("law and
order") can be enforced by a system of coercion so humane as not to
reduce the number of the inhabitants or materially to lower their
physical powers. Such would, by reasonable expectation, be the character
of this projected Imperial tutelage and usufruct of the nations of
Christendom. In its working-out this German project should accordingly
differ very appreciably from the policy which its imperial ambitions
have constrained the Japanese establishment to pursue in its dealings
with the life and fortunes of its recently, and currently, acquired
subject peoples.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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