What We Must Dare to Say ⁽¹⁾

My recent article "What We Must Dare to Say" has earned me many letters.
When I took upon myself the responsibility of throwing this project into the arena of ideas, I expected violent attacks from those who do not know that patriotism often consists in making sacrifices of the noblest sentiments for the needs of national preservation. I now come to think that those whom I thought I was deliberately offending are fewer in number than I imagined, since, among all the letters I have received from our readers who are passionate about the public good, there is not one that does not approve of me without reservations.

And yet, some of them come from old colonials, from men to whom the fact of having devoted their energies to the prosperity of our Far Eastern domain should make the concession of this domain to the conditional exploitation of foreigners more painful than to the professional and ignorant super-nationalists!

On the contrary, some bring me the testimony of their realizing competence and their enlightened patriotism.
They understood because once again it is nothing else, that it is not an abandonment of sovereignty that I propose, but a commercial affair, a transfer of present and future public services and companies, with their expenses and their revenues, that is to say with their possible profits, for a determined period. Moreover, any sensible person knows that most State organizations are industrial companies and that apart from Justice, Police, Education and Public Assistance, the Public Works Services, Transport, the Agricultural, Forestry, Industrial Domain, public buildings are totally independent of the notion of sovereignty. The most authoritative learned economists or legal experts admit today that this metaphysical notion must be more and more restricted. Are there not countries where the police itself is ensured by private initiative?

The concession system for a large number of services often works fruitfully when the concessionaire has been able to reserve the advantages it entails.

Certainly, it is good not to deliver to the appetites of capitalist societies the services that the State can operate in the general interest, but when, on the contrary, the State can find outside itself the resources necessary for the organization of these services and their extension, and when these resources are lacking, hesitation is not possible.

Do we not see, in France itself, major public works capable of providing numerous advantages, not being undertaken for lack of money?
And yet, the French metropolis is rich in the capital legacy of an entire past of work and economy.

In our colonies, on the contrary, the past brings nothing and the future is full of unlimited promises, fruitful relationships, and indefinite prosperity.
Now, these resources that we lack in France for essential work, how would we find them for our colonies? There is an obvious fact to which we must bow. A colonizing country has a moral obligation to develop the prosperity of the territories it has conquered by force of arms.

We cannot fulfill this obligation by our own strength, whatever profits the future may allow us to derive from it, because we do not possess the necessary capital. However, we cannot definitively abandon to foreigners the possession of a territory over which French laws and justice reign, which our soldiers have conquered and preserved, which our teachers and professors have instructed.

But would it not be possible, while retaining the French troops, police, courts and schools, to cede to the Americans the services and exploitations of an industrial or agricultural nature, capable, while bringing in profits, of giving a formidable boost to the prosperity of the colony, to its agriculture, its trade, its industry?

This is the problem clearly posed, without possible equivocation. In a future article, I will study the broad outlines of its implementation, the consequences that its success would entail for our financial situation, as well as the economic, political and strategic advantages that it could provide to the United States.

Jean Concian.

(1) See Paris-Soir of September 11.