FOREWORD
In the story of the French seizure of Morocco, and of the Italian descent upon Tripoli, we are concerned with a set of motives determining European action in Africa entirely different from those we have been examining in the last chapters. We now enter the sphere of purely imperialistic undertakings. We chronicle events and policies which are not the outcome of haphazard circumstance, and which do not respond to the immutable laws of racial expansion. They are precipitated and evolved by statesmen, whose actions are propelled in part by nationalistic impulses, and in part by personal ambitions—by the will-to-power. The driving force behind them is essentially imperialistic, the desire for national dominion and world-power. For a time they incarnate this nationalist sentiment. They alternately use, and are used by, capitalistic finance, by a military caste, by associations of individuals—influences expressing themselves through a purchasable Press, by which public opinion is excited. But these personal and collective influences would hardly suffice to bring about the desired ends, without the presence in a considerable section of the population, of the glowing embers of nationalist arrogance ever ready to burst into flames.
The generating motive of these imperialistic adventures must not be sought in local circumstances alone, but in the complicated game of high politics played by diplomatists in Europe. The African peoples and territories affected are pawns on the diplomatic chessboard of Europe, counters in higher stakes.
The French seizure of Morocco and the Italian descent upon Tripoli are first and foremost chapters in contemporary European history. They are links, and powerful links, Morocco especially, in the chain of circumstances which generated the Great War of 1914. Indeed, it was the decision of France, Britain, and Italy in the years immediately preceding the Great War to treat Mediterranean Africa in the light of their own respective nationalist interests; to partition among themselves an extensive region of the earth's surface of notable economic and strategic importance without the slightest regard to the interests of its native inhabitants, and in defiance of formal international treaties, which produced the condition of international anarchy whence the Great War sprang.
The historian who, in his survey of the underlying causes of the most terrible catastrophe which has befallen civilisation, concentrates his view upon the rape of Belgium, and omits the precedent rape of North Africa, is dishonest with the generation he professes to enlighten. The French seizure of Morocco and the Italian descent upon Tripoli made havoc of the moral law of Europe.
The invasion of Belgium was not the inauguration of an era of Treaty -breaking in Europe. It was the culmination of an era.
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