It is true, a somewhat accentuated eagerness on the part of the Imperial establishment to get the maximum service in a minimum of time and at a minimum cost from these subject populations,--as, e.g., in Silesia and Poland, in Schleswig-Holstein, in Alsace-Lorraine, or in its African and Oceanic possessions,--has at times led to practices altogether dubious on humanitarian grounds, at the same time that in point of thrifty management they have gone beyond "what the traffic will bear." Yet it is not to be overlooked--and in this connection it is a point of some weight--that, so far as the predatory traditions of its statecraft will permit, the Imperial establishment has in all these matters been guided by a singularly unreserved attention to its own material advantage.

Where its management in these premises has yielded a less profitable usufruct than the circumstances would reasonably admit, the failure has been due to an excess of cupidity rather than the reverse.
The circumstantial evidence converges to the effect that the Imperial establishment may confidently be counted on to manage the affairs of its subject peoples with an eye single to its own material gain, and it may with equal confidence be counted on that in the long run no unadvised excesses will be practised.

Of course, an excessive adventure in atrocity and predation, due to such human infirmity in its agents or in its directorate as has been shown in various recent episodes, is to be looked for now and again; but these phenomena would come in by way of fluctuating variations from the authentic routine, rather than as systematic features of it.
That superfluity of naughtiness that has given character to the current German Imperial policy in Belgium, e.g., or that similarly has characterised the dealings of Imperial Japan in Korea during the late "benevolent assimilation" of that people into Japanese-Imperial usufruct, is not fairly to be taken to indicate what such an Imperial establishment may be expected to do with a subject people on a footing of settled and long-term exploitation.

At the outset, in both instances, the policy of frightfulness was dictated by a well-advised view to economy of effort in reducing the subject people to an abject state of intimidation, according to the art of war as set forth in the manuals; whereas latterly the somewhat profligate excesses of the government of occupation--decently covered with diplomatic parables on benevolence and legality--have been dictated by military convenience, particularly by the need of forced labor and the desirability of a reduced population in the acquired territory.

So also the "personally conducted" dealings with the Armenians by use of the Turks should probably also best be explained as an endeavour to reduce the numbers of an undesirable population beforehand, without incurring unnecessary blame.