But it is doubtful whether the question of markets is as potent a cause of armaments and war as the competition to secure concessions, monopolies, and spheres of influence. The export of capital means much more for the modern politics of imperialism than the export of manufactured goods. The _conquistador_ of to-day is the financier who acquires mining rights in Morocco, loan privileges in Turkey, or railway concessions in China. The foreign policy of Great Britain and our place in the European system has been governed for a generation by the occupation of Egypt, whither we went in the wake of the bond-holders. It explains our long bickerings with France; it helped to fling an isolated France into the arms of Russia; it brought us finally into the disastrous bargain over Morocco which underlay our feud with Germany. The competition of national financial groups for concessions in Turkey or China is not the competition of the market-place at home. Behind the financier stands the diplomatist, and behind the diplomatist is his navy. There is a clash of armor-plates when these competitors jostle. The struggle for a Balance of Power in Europe has often seemed little more than a race for the force and prestige which would enable the dominant Power or group of Powers to secure the concessions of the monopoly spheres which it coveted in the half-developed regions of the earth. No modern nation would openly make war to secure such ends as these, for no democracy would support it. Even the half-evolved democracy of Russia recoiled from the Manchurian War. But every nation, by pursuing these ends, makes the armed peace and the unstable equilibrium which prepares our wars. [Sidenote: Colonial free trade must be declared by international agreement, and the export of capital internationalized.]