THE LENINIST MYTH OF IMPERIALISM
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The central thesis of Lenin's theory is this, that the twentieth–
century wars, though waged in Europe and precipitated by Euro–
pean conflicts, have as their stake and meaning the division of the
planet. The main difficulty in trying to refute this theory is that
it is difficult to see how it can
be
proved and by the same token how
it can be disproved. No one denies that the First World War broke
out because of German-Slav rivalry in the Balkans. Nor does any–
one deny that the victors did not return to Germany the colonies
they had occupied during the hostilities, and that secret agreements
had provided for the division of these colonies among the Allies. No
one questions the fact that if Germany had been victorious she would
have seized at least part of the French and British empires.
It
can
therefore be taken for granted that the immediate cause of the war
had nothing to do with overseas territories, and that the ·issue of the
war inevitably implied a new division of the colonies. Beyond these
facts, we are in the realm of interpretations.
The burden of proof obviously rests upon those who attribute to
the events a deep significance unknown to the protagonists. In neither
of the two camps did statesmen believe that the acquisition of dis–
tant possessions justified a European war, or that the economic
system had no choice but to expand.
It
is true that the victorious
camp profited from the occasion to seize the colonies of the de–
feated camp; but this eventuation does not introduce any new factor
into the process of European history, and does not prove in any way
that Frenchmen, Englishmen, or Germans, though they thought they
were fighting to preserve the power or the honor of their respective
nations, fought in actuality because the capitalists, having reached
the limits of the earth, had finally no other choice but to resort to
arms to enlarge their respective shares in the territory of the world.
In the forming of alignments, as well as in the unleashing of
hostilities, it is easy to discover the influence of traditional or emo–
tional conflicts; but they supply no proof of the allegation that in
our time capitalist rivalries sovereignly determine human fate. The
French penetration of Morocco created an additional reason for
discord; but Frenchmen and Germans, whose economies were to a
far greater degree complementary than competing, had never be–
come reconciled after 1870. The French were not calling for a war
to recover Alsace-Lorraine, but neither had they morally ratified the
