Is it irrelevant in a case like that of the Dardanelles? The Black Sea region is already a great agricultural exporting region; it is destined most probably to become the industrial center of Russia. But to carry out goods, Russian ships must pass through a narrow Turkish strait. Mr. Dickinson says that for all “peace purposes” the passage is free. Is it? Let us suppose that Mexico held New York harbor, or that Ecuador held Liverpool. Would these harbors be free to American and English commerce? They would be free if Mexico and Ecuador were highly efficient governments imbued with the doctrine of absolute free trade. Then commerce might pass through easily. But if Mexicans or Ecuadorians took it into their heads to exercise sovereignty by setting up a tariff zone around New York or Liverpool, who would regard political power as irrelevant to economic power? Certainly not the Manchester exporter as he paid his customs tax to the pleasant official from Ecuador. Although England is in no danger from Ecuador, there are nations in the world which suffer just as fantastically. There is the case of Servia, shut off from a “window on the sea.” Servia exports pigs, when she isn’t fighting for the privilege of exporting them. But to export anything she has to run the gauntlet of an Austrian tariff to the north, Albanian and Greek discrimination to the west and south. Shut off from the sea, she is like a man trying to get out of a restaurant who has still to tip the waiter, the headwaiter, the girl who took care of his hat, and the boy who brushed it. [Sidenote: No; political power is an instrument for monopolies and concessions.] Political power is not in the least irrelevant to economic power. Mr. Dickinson has no doubt heard of a thing which we Americans call vulgarly “dollar diplomacy.” European powers do not call it that, but they practise it. They call it staking out “spheres of influence,” and there is nothing sentimental or illusory about it. The nation that can secure political control of an undeveloped country can decide who shall receive the mining rights and the railroad franchises, can fix railroad rates to favor its own manufacturers, can use all the methods which Americans describe as restraint of trade. It may have been dishonest, it certainly wasn’t a delusion, when capitalists in those dreadful early days of this republic bought political power to further economic ends. A legislature or a governor was generally worth the price in this country, and we presume that they would be worth the price in Asia Minor. If German bureaucrats governed Morocco, they would, we suppose, be good to their friends, almost all of whom have at least a nominal residence east of Belgium, and French capitalists might then be prospecting fresh mines and pastures new.