is, it is true, a very indefinite one, and it is impossible to determine
what degree of civilization justifies annexation and subjugation. The
impossibility of finding a legitimate limit to these international
relations has been the cause of many wars. The subjugated nation does
not recognize this right of subjugation, and the more powerful civilized
nation refuses to admit the claim of the subjugated to independence.
This situation becomes peculiarly critical when the conditions of
civilization have changed in the course of time. The subject nation has,
perhaps, adopted higher methods and conceptions of life, and the
difference in civilization has consequently lessened. Such a state of
things is growing ripe in British India.

Lastly, in all times the right of conquest by war has been admitted. It
may be that a growing people cannot win colonies from uncivilized races,
and yet the State wishes to retain the surplus population which the
mother-country can no longer feed. Then the only course left is to
acquire the necessary territory by war. Thus the instinct of
self-preservation leads inevitably to war, and the conquest of foreign
soil. It is not the possessor, but the victor, who then has the right.
The threatened people will see the point of Goethe's lines:

"That which them didst inherit from thy sires,
In order to possess it, must be won."

The procedure of Italy in Tripoli furnishes an example of such
conditions, while Germany in the Morocco question could not rouse
herself to a similar resolution.[C]

[Footnote C: This does not imply that Germany could and ought to have
occupied part of Morocco. On more than one ground I think that it was