And yet the plain fact is that the interrelation of peoples has gone so far that to advocate international laissez-faire now is to speak a counsel of despair. Commercial cunning, lust of conquest, rum, bibles, rifles, missionaries, traders, concessionaires have brought the two civilizations into contact, and the problem created must be solved, not evaded. [Sidenote: Economic imperialism and the weak State.] The great African empires, for example, were not created deliberately by theoretical imperialists. Explorers, missionaries, and traders penetrated these countries. They found rubber, oil, cocoa, tin; they could sell cotton goods, rifles, liquor. The native rulers bartered away enormous riches at trivial prices. But the trading-posts and the concessions were insecure. There were raids and massacres. No public works existed, no administrative machinery. The Europeans exploited the natives cruelly, and the natives retaliated. Concession hunters and merchants from other nations began to come in. They bribed and bullied the chiefs, and created still greater insecurity. An appeal would be made to the home government for help, which generally meant declaring a protectorate of the country. Armed forces were sent in to pacify, and civil servants to administer the country. These protectorates were generally sanctioned by the other European governments on the proviso that trade should be free to all.... It is essential to remember that what turns a territory into a diplomatic “problem” is the combination of natural resources, cheap labor, markets, defenselessness, corrupt and inefficient government. The desert of Sahara is no “problem,” except where there are oases and trade routes. Switzerland is no “problem,” for Switzerland is a highly organized modern state. But Mexico is a problem, and Haiti, and Turkey, and Persia. They have the pretension of political independence which they do not fulfil. They are seething with corruption, eaten up with “foreign” concessions, and unable to control the adventurers they attract or safeguard the rights which these adventurers claim. More foreign capital is invested in the United States than in Mexico, but the United States is not a “problem” and Mexico is. The difference was hinted at in President Wilson’s speech at Mobile. Foreigners invest in the United States, and they are assured that life will be reasonably safe and that titles to property are secured by orderly legal means. But in Mexico they are given “concessions,” which means that they secure extra privileges and run greater risks, and they count upon the support of European governments or of the United States to protect them and their property. [Sidenote: Economic penetration into weak States is protected only through order and political control.]