“When one race shows itself superior to another in the various externals of domestic life, it inevitably in the long run gets the upper hand in public life and establishes its predominance. Whether this predominance is asserted by peaceable means or feats of arms, it is none the less, when the proper time comes, officially established, and afterwards unreservedly acknowledged. I have said that this law is the only thing which accounts for the history of the human race and the revolutions of empires, and that, moreover, it explains and justifies the appropriation by Europeans of territories in Asia, Africa, and Oceania, and the whole of our colonial development.” [43]
The western European nations with their colonies represent the socially efficient nations, in various degrees. Some writers, American and English, such as Professor Giddings and Mr. Kidd, believe that the Teutonic races, and in particular the Anglo-Saxon branches, represent the highest order of efficiency, in which notion they are supported by a little group of Anglophil Frenchmen.
This genuine and confident conviction about “social efficiency” must be taken as the chief moral support of Imperialism.” Human progress requires the maintenance of the race struggle, in which the weakest races shall go under, while the ‘socially efficient’ races survive and flourish: we are the ‘socially efficient’ race.” So runs the imperialist argument.
Now, thus closely stated, the meaning of the term “socially efficient” becomes evident. It is simply the antithesis of “weak,” and is equivalent to “strong in the struggle of life:” Taken at the first blush it suggests admitted moral and intellectual virtues of some broad general kind, and is afterwards taken to imply such qualities. But applied in the present “natural history” sense, it signifies nothing more or less than capacity to beat other races, who, from their failure, are spoken of as “lower.” It is merely a repetition of the phrase “survival of the fittest,” the meaning of which is clear when the question is put, “Fittest to do what?” and the answer follows, “Fittest to survive.”