LAST DITCH OF DEMOCRACY - Majority Rights

and his monopolists setting out on a scheme that implies very expensive
trade routes, i.e., routes that will require police expenses much greater
than would be the case of trade routes maintained by amicable
agreement with other nations.
The trade route to the Orient, via the Pacific Ocean, has become very
costly. After one-fourth of a century, American plus Rooseveltian
methods have generated a degree of friction that has become suddenly
quite expensive. The U.S. has irritated Japan. Now I see very
considerable likelihood that the methods, and their intensification as
registered during the last unfortunate decade, I see, I repeat, a very
considerable likelihood that these methods of grab and extortion and
bottleneck will in time irritate other eastern and near-eastern peoples.
And all that will go into the bill, as it has gone into England’s, and the
U.S. will have either to pay or get out. There is an old motto about the
inutility of winning wars militarily when they have already been
politically lost.
What about wars that are economically lost? To win a war,
economically, as distinct from merely carrying out an incursion, the
subsequent system, the subsequent peace system, or pacification system
must bring with it at least a temporary economic stability. Stability
enough, that is, to permit the trade routes to pay for their upkeep, that
upkeep including the cost of maintainin’ order along them.
It was suggested in the American Congress in the 1870’s that “as it costs
the government 20,000 dollars per head to kill off the red warriors” (i.e.,
American Indians), it might be humaner and even cheaper to educate.
But you were there dealin’ with a very sparse population of improvident
scattered tribes, NOT with millions and millions of, say, Mohammedans,
proud with age-old tradition, thousand and more years of unified
doctrine, traditions, customs, and a dislike of the Anglo-Saxon
disposition, let alone their feelings toward other races. Now I have no
doubt, any more than you have, that one Dupont or whosis or Vickers