Imperialism is once again bulking large as a cause of
inter- national ill-will, and fresh topical interest attaches to Mr. Hobson's thirty-year-old indictment. This revised edition (Allen and Unwin, 8s. 6d.) carries a new Introduction and statistical tables designed to bring the matter of the argument up to date ; but the argument itself remains essentially un- changed. The mainspring of Imperialism is under-consump- tion, which by limiting home markets drives investment to unexploited fields. The economic interests of the investing minority are over-represented in politics, deceptively idealised in the Press, powerful to enrol every kind of psychological aid from the primitive pugnacity of the Jingo to the genuine altruism of the humanitarian. The results of Imperialism are a burdensome military budget, chronic friction with other nations, deterioration of the national character, and—apart from possible incidental gains—the ruin of the exploited natives. Looking further, Mr. Hobson sees for the Imperial power a degeneration into pure parasitism and eventually a collapse, repeating that of Rome, under the combined onslaught of the barbarians and its own revolting mercenaries. The argument wears rather unevenly. The problem of India is nearer solution than Mr. Hobson expected. The self-governing Dominions have apparently stabilised their relation to the mother country at a point far short of that complete disintegration which he envisaged. The temper of the nation has suffered a healthy revulsion. But in Jamaica, in Trinidad, in the African protec- torates, current events testify to Mr. Hobson's perspicuity ; while as he describes the technique of aggression it seems mere accident that his examples are drawn from South Africa and nineteenth-century China and not from Abyssinia and Manchuria. As for his particular brand of economic interpre- tation of history, inadequate and open to criticism as it may be, few would deny that it provides at least a major element in the true explanation. There can be few books which, written a generation ago and with reference to topical controversy, could stand so well the test of reissue.
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