We need not argue that human character is absolutely better than it was in earlie

r centuries, nor even that the predatory instincts of mankind have grown appreci
ably weaker. Human character, for that matter, is not a fixed or self-subsistent
thing; it is the habit which human beings acquire of adjusting themselves to th
eir environment. The environment changes and the character with it. What mainly
differentiates our century from those which went before it is that the forms of
wealth have changed. Wealth in the days of the wars for a balance of power meant
primarily land. Wealth in our day is primarily the opportunity for peculiarly p
rofitable investment. This economic evolution has modified most of our social in
stitutions, and with them our diplomacy. Conquest in the old sense of the world
has become obsolete. A predatory Power does not go out with drums and banners to
seize estates for its feudal aristocracy. It applies pressure, and pressure whi
ch often involves the possession of fleets and armies, to secure concessions for
its financiers. There is no advance in morality here, no conscious progress tow
ards a Golden Age. The change cannot be described in phrases from Isaiah or in v
erses from Vergil. It is a non-moral development, but it has none the less a dir
ect bearing upon our hopes of peace. The instinct to conquer is as sharp and ins
atiable as ever, but it has found a means of conquering beyond frontiers. Our mo
dern conquistadores do not burn their ships when they alight on coveted soil, as
though to anchor themselves for ever on its fertile acres. Our bankers will not
do in China what Cortes and Pizarro did in the New World. They build a railway
or sink a mine. Our Ahabs do not take Naboth's vineyard; they invest money in it
. The struggle for a balance of power means to-day a struggle for liberty. and o
pportunity to use "places in the sun" across the seas. For the modern world a pl
ace in the sun is not a smiling valley, or a rich plain in which a victorious ar
my will settle, and build homes and found families. It is a territory to "exploi
t," and the active agents in the process are now the bankers and investors who f
loat loans, and secure concessions. Even where conquest is incidentally necessar
y, as in Morocco, there is no migration to the new territory and the conquering
Power rarely troubles to annex it It "occupies" it, only because without occupat
ion it cannot safely employ its capital in building railways or sinking mines. L
and-hunger is not the malady of the modern world. In all this we shall not disco
ver the faintest resemblance to the perils and ambitions which roused the passio
ns and stimulated the sacrifices of the earlier struggles for a balance of power
.