The aims of modern war-makers are two. First, capitalism must have raw materials, including coal and oil, the sources of power, and gold and silver, the bases of credit. Parts of the world which are so unfortunate as to be rich in these substances become the bone of contention between rival financial groups, organized as nations. Some sarcastic writer has defined a "backward" nation as one which has gold mines and no navy. We are horrified to read of the wars of the French monarchs, caused by the jealous quarrels of mistresses; but in 1905 we saw Russia and Japan go to war and waste a million lives because certain Russian grand dukes had bribed certain Chinese mandarins and obtained concessions of timber on the Yalu River. We now observe France and Germany vowed to undying hate because of iron mines in Lorraine, and the efforts of France to take the coal mines of Silesia from Germany, and give them to Poland, which is another name for French capitalism. The other end sought by the war-makers is markets for manufactured products, and control of trade routes, coaling stations and cables necessary to the building up of foreign trade. England has been "mistress of the seas" for some 300 years, which meant that her traders had obtained most of these advantages. But then came Germany, with her newly developed commercialism, shoving her rival out of the way. The Englishman was easy-going; he liked to play cricket, and stop and drink tea every afternoon. But the German worked all day and part of the night; he trained himself as a specialist, he studied the needs of his customers--all of which to the Englishman was "unfair" competition. But here were the populations of the crowded slums, dependent for their weekly wage and their daily bread upon the ability of the factories to go on turning out products! Here was the ever-blackening shadow of unemployment, the mutterings of social discontent, the agitators on the soap-boxes, the workers listening to them with more and more eager attention, and the journalists and politicians and bankers watching this phenomenon with a ghastly fear. So came the great war. Social discontent was forgotten over night, and England and France plunged in to down their hated rival, once and for all time. Now they have succeeded: Germany's ships have been taken from her, and likewise her cables and coaling stations; the Berlin-Bagdad Railroad is a forgotten dream; the British sit in Constantinople, and the traffic goes by sea. American capitalism wakes up, and rubs its eyes after a debauch of Presbyterian idealism, and discovers that it has paid out some $20,000,000,000, in order to confer all these privileges and advantages upon its rivals!