increasingly essential to the inhabitants of northern lands. It was the
realization of this that brought on the struggle of the great powers
for the possession of tropical territory which, for years before, they
did not think worth while raising a flag over. No country in the future
can consider itself safe unless it has secure access to such sources. We
had a sharp lesson in this during the war. Palm oil, it seems, is
necessary for the manufacture of tinplate, an industry that was built up
in the United States by the McKinley tariff. The British possessions in
West Africa were the chief source of palm oil and the Germans had the
handling of it. During the war the British Government assumed control of
the palm oil products of the British and German colonies and prohibited
their export to other countries than England. Americans protested and
beseeched, but in vain. The British held, quite correctly, that they
needed all the oil they could get for food and lubrication and
nitroglycerin. But the British also needed canned meat from America for
their soldiers and when it was at length brought to their attention that
the packers could not ship meat unless they had cans and that cans could
not be made without tin and that tin could not be made without palm oil
the British Government consented to let us buy a little of their palm
oil. The lesson is that of Voltaire's story, "Candide," "Let us
cultivate our own garden"--and plant a few palm trees in it--also rubber
trees, but that is another story.

The international struggle for oil led to the partition of the Pacific
as the struggle for rubber led to the partition of Africa. Theodor
Weber, as Stevenson says, "harried the Samoans" to get copra much as
King Leopold of Belgium harried the Congoese to get caoutchouc. It was
Weber who first fully realized that the South Sea islands, formerly
given over to cannibals, pirates and missionaries, might be made
immensely valuable through the cultivation of the coconut palms. When