Thorstein Veblen
Review author to: 'L' Imperialisme allemand'. By MAURICE LAIR. 
Paris: Armand Colin, 1902. 12mo, pp. vii + 341.
The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 11, No. 2. (Mar., 1903), p. 311.
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This is a book for general readers rather than for students. It opens 
with a chapter of general reflections on the spread and present status 
of commercial imperialism among the greater powers, which is followed 
by a survey of the events, military, political, industrial and 
commercial, that have given Germany her policy of armed peace and 
commercial expansion. It is well and fluently written, from the 
standpoint of a sympathetic observer, though not with the animus of 
a friend or apologist. The upshot of the argument is that Germany as 
a commercial world-power, and therefore also as a military world-power, 
has reached, if it has not passed, its culmination. The thirty-years' 
period of prosperity has been of the nature of a speculative inflation, 
the advantages of which have inured to the large capitalists and have 
not been balanced by any comparable amelioration of the lot of the 
populace. The outcome is a lowering and coarsening of national ideals 
and a spread of popular discontent. Germany is at the end of her 
career of brilliant commercial and military achievements, because she 
is short of resources, as compared with her rivals, and is 
politically unstable because of class antagonism and moral 
deterioration.