But it will take many years for a similar process to repeat itself. The immediate question is what are the victorious nations going to do with the rights and privileges and advantages of which they have despoiled Germany. Will the leadership go to France? Anyone who knows the business character of the French as revealed in their past and their present, will deny it. The French are a highly intellectual nation. They have served humanity with the greatest distinction in the field of science. There is no man of taste in all the world who does not rejoice in the achievements of their writers and artists. But they have never distinguished themselves in the field of modern industry. The very qualities that make them great have hampered them in this competition. Those qualities have caused them to concentrate attention upon the production of individual articles, to study the needs of people of wealth and high refinement. But the wealthy and refined are always a small minority. This handicap has made itself felt with increasing force since the second half of the eighteenth century, when new methods of manufacturing were discovered which made it possible to produce more cheaply and better than hitherto articles for the consumption of the masses. Manufacturing became service to the common people because things could be produced so cheaply they found wider and more regular markets, and consesequently yielded larger profits.

In În consequence of the protection which the art manufacturers of France have enjoyed since the days of Henry IV, and especially since Colbert, the talent and capital of France have been concentrated in this field. The disadvantages of that policy appeared as early as 1786, when England concluded a 'most favored nation' treaty with France, which ended the old tariff war

between those countries. Among other things, the duties upon porcelain were abolished. Eden, the negotiator for England, said: "The few dozen plates that we may send you will be sorry compensation for the magnificent porcelain services of Sèvres which you will sell us.' But Sèvres is so costly even without paying a duty that only a few' people can purchase it. On the other hand, cheap English crockery entered France in great quantities, and England was enriched by the trade. French manufacturers have retained this character up to the present time. This is true, even in cases where modern machinery or processes have been introduced in that country earlier than elsewhere. That happened with industrial chemistry. Here Germany speedily took precedence.

No, the lion's share of what Germany has lost will, at least for the immediate future, go to the AngloSaxons; but it will not go to the mother country, England. England had good reasons for the fear it entertained, even before the war, of losing the industrial precedence it had enjoyed since the first half of the nineteenth century. The principal point made then was that the country had gone to sleep, that it was enjoying with slothful satisfaction its old conquests. As a result it was being speedily overtaken by Germany and America- countries that appropriate with restless energy every attainment of science that can be made to serve industry and that with the vigor and push of young and striving nations- invade every market of the world. But there were also other conditions that threatened Britain's leadership, such as its declining output of ore. Its steel industry, formerly the largest in the world, had fallen to third rank; so that on the occasion of a protective tariff anti-dumping bill, presented to Parliament late last Novem

ber, the objection could be raised that English shipbuilding would have been ruined before the war if Germany had not dumped so much steel in the country.

On the other hand, certain climatic advantages promised to assure the leadership of the English cotton industry for an indefinite period. During recent years it added more to its spindles than all the rest of the world besides. Exorbitant prices are being paid for English cotton factories, not only because they are exceedingly profitable now, but because their profits are expected to increase. In other respects, however, England's future production promises to be limited in a growing degree to the manufacture of articles which its wealthier people cannot procure from abroad. Britain's leading position as the world's banker and the world's carrier is already threatened by the United States. The Americans are directing their efforts with system and determination to supplant Europe, which has now become dependent upon them in every part of the world and in every sphere of business. Their methods of production are diametrically opposite those of the French. The latter, as we have said, are devoted to the manufacture of fine individual articles, of things that the masses cannot hope to use. The Americans concentrate almost entirely on the production of goods for the common people. Their interest does not centre upon single articles of high artistic value, produced by the most skillful artisans, but upon erecting vast establishments of every kind to produce wares in great quantities. The finished product is analyzed into individual parts; a semi-automatic machine is devised to produce each one of these parts. Systems are worked out by which these parts are made immediately interchangeable and adjustable

to each other. A single uniform product satisfies the needs of all purchasers. If that is not satisfactory, a system is devised for producing a number of models on a uniform basis. If this proves practicable, then the types are multiplied. This method of production has been encouraged by two conditions

uniformity of taste among the people, and a vast market area within which complete free trade prevails. This market area is greater than that enjoyed by any other country in the world; for the United States, although it maintains a tariff wall against foreign countries, constitutes within itself the greatest free trade region that exists. These two conditions—similarity of demand and free trade over a wide have created a market unequaled elsewhere. In addition, the variety of training and aptitudes and social standards brought into the United States by an army of emigrants, has made it possible to devise a system of labor administration peculiarly adapted to the employment of semiautomatic machines and the production of uniform parts, as well as to the concentration of industries in great establishments.

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But hand in hand with this development there has occurred a change in the position of the United States with respect to the rest of the world. Washington advised his fellow countrymen not to interfere in European affairs. Monroe went further and would exclude the European nations from interference in American affairs. But as early as thirty years ago, the great increase of wealth in America began to stimulate imperialist ambitions. Admiral Mahan, the author of The Influence of Sea Power in History, had as little use for pacifism, international arbitration, and a League of Nations, as any Pan-German. Even the gigantic territories of the United States began to

afford too small a market area for its great industries. When the idea of a Middle Europe was heralded abroad, President Wilson, a man of free-trade sympathies, characterized the policy it represented as an intolerable restriction upon the natural rights of every American to trade wherever he saw fit. Fresh from his triumph over the trusts, he declared in one of his speeches during his second presidential campaign, that wherever restrictions upon the trusts were likely to interfere with their foreign trade, those restrictions would be removed; and he made the idea of Middle Europe an actual asset in his agitation to induce the Americans to enter the war.

Indeed, what tremendous progress the United States had made during this war toward the economic mastery of the world! That country which only a few years ago was crying for the capital of every well-to-do country of Europe, in order to develop its incomparable natural resources, has now become the banker of Europe, without whose assistance the Entente countries could not have won the war, and without whom neither victors nor vanquished can recover from the consequences of the war. Even during that conflict, America's capitalist penetration of European countries began. It started with Russia, then it extended to Italy. It has made great headway in France; and even wealthy England, proud of its financial supremacy, begins to feel its pressure. Hand in hand with this, the greatest art works and treasures of European civilization are going by shiploads to America. A corporation with a capital of twenty million dollars has been founded to purchase antiques and artistic articles of gold and silver, pictures, bronzes, and similar objects in Russia. A systematic purchase of the art treasures of Italy has begun. Some of the most valuable

But economic history shows that no nation is permitted to dominate the world permanently. In the second half of the Middle Ages Italy occupied that position. Soon after the Renaissance precedence passed to Spain, then, in turn, to the Dutch; and after these the French were the great leaders of in-. dustry and commerce. Finally, Great Britain took that position. In the United States a great intermingling of peoples, of emigrants from Holland, Great Britain, Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia, Italy, and the Slavic countries has occurred. They now march in the front rank. But the very conditions that have brought about America's supremacy exist likewise in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. In some respects these countries are already superior to Europe. It is not impossible that with the growth of population in the United States, conditions of production will become more difficult and these other countries will come to the front. Furthermore, there could be no greater folly than to assume that the economic leadership of the world will always belong to the same race. Even within the past few years, the Japanese have become serious competitors of the whites in every field. Their position in the East resembles in some respects the happy position of England in the West. Their remarkable talent for assimilating foreign methods, their skillful and energetic accommodation of those methods to their own ends, seem to promise them still greater victories.

Last of all, no one can foresee what great changes of a more general character may possibly occur in world economics. Such changes have occurred in the last two centuries. The relations of the temperate zone and the tropics may be reversed, and the inhabitants of the latter regions may in time become the great industrial producers.

Now what position will Germany hold in this future? I am not speaking of the Germans of the epublic alone, but of every German wherever the language is spoken - the Germans in Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, the Baltic Provinces, and abroad. The hatred which now follows them will turn them back to the original sources of their strength. What made Germany great was not militarism. The Germans were a great nation long before Frederick the Great, Wilhelm of Prussia, and his successors taught them military discipline, and before incomparable leaders, like Bismarck and Moltke, with the help of these disciplined masses, placed their country at the political head of Europe. These men merely utilized the qualities that made the German nation great, and directed them to political ends. Long before that, the Germans had placed the intellectual life of the world on a new basis at the time of the Reformation. Then they produced Leibniz, whose universal spirit left no field of science untouched. After him followed a succession of musical geniuses, such as the world had never known, Bach, Handel, Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, Schubert, Brahms. Then those princes of poetry, Lessing, Goethe, Schiller; and in turn all those who have been the schoolmasters of the world in every sphere of science during the nineteenth century. The strength of the German people is in their intellect and in their systematic

application of the products of their intellect to their daily tasks. During the last forty years, this intellect addressed itself to practical affairs, to technical progress, and economic development, and with the help of its disciplined and skilled labor, it accomplished things that made our country the envy of the world. These fundamental qualities will remain the possession of the German nation, even though its military power has disappeared. If the French were not so blind, they would see that this is the real danger we present. They have nothing to fear from a warlike revolt of the disarmed Germans, nor from a union of the Germans of the annihilated Austro-Hungarian monarchy with the Germans of the republic. Nor will they attain their object by force, as Marshal Foch recommends, or by a caricature of a League of Nations intended to prevent Germany's recovery, or by an AngloLatin Alliance against us if the League fails. So long as the Germans remain loyal to that which made them great in the past, they will be a powerful influence in the world even though they are politically helpless. The strength of the German people lies in their intellectual gifts and in employing them in the service of mankind. This is the true principle of unity that joins the North with the South and the East with the West and no effort to partition the country will ever destroy that unity. Germans inevitably will be leaders both in the progress of science and in disseminating the results of that progress. We have shown ourselves indispensable in the first field. Our success in the second has been recognized by our most implacable opponents for years. At the Brussels meeting, where the International Congress for the Legal Protection of Labor was founded, Emil Vandervelde, who as a Social Demo

crat refused to participate in the proceedings of a convention summoned by bourgeois organizers, acted as a reporter in order to attend the meetings. I had a furious debate with Yves Guyot at the convention, in which that gentleman, with his reactionary views, came off rather poorly. After the session was over, Vandervelde came up to me and said: 'Hitherto we considered France the leader of progress; this leadership in social legislation has now passed to Germany.' Even after our military defeat we shall retain that leadership.

It is now a century since the Holy Alliance was formed by the Eastern Powers, to repress political freedom and to prevent the unity of peoples. But the liberal ideas of France, then cast down in the humiliation of defeat, and the striving toward national unity of nations divided under different rulers, have overcome every obstacle of reactionary power. In a similar way, the social ideals of Germany will win a victory, in spite of every hindrance which France may now place in our way.

Ancient Greece lost its political importance after the Peloponnesian war; but Grecian civilization did not disappear. It was then at the point of becoming the ruler of the world. Oftentimes has the European war against the Germans been compared with the Peloponnesian war. European civilization would not disappear, were Europe itself to be destroyed. Its conquest of the world, already well under way, will continue at an even more rapid rate, and the leaders of this conquest will be the Germans. They will be leaders, be

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cause it has been made so difficult for them to live in Germany. Millions of our fellow countrymen will leave their homes. That is a painful thing for those that migrate and those that stay behind. But the Fatherland is not a mere locality, although certain localities may be dear to the heart and memory. The Fatherland is an intellectual and moral community of people seeking the same ends. It is not our duty, therefore, to retain these wouldbe emigrants. The very hatred of our enemies will force them to hold together, and to keep up their association with those whom they have left behind. And so, if fear and envy and hatred and revenge are making their native land too narrow for the Germans, these sentiments are at the same time making the whole earth the home of the Germans. Their science and talent for organizing will attract to their hands, capital and labor, and will make them leaders in subjugating the world's natural resources. Meantime, their ideals will conquer the thoughts of mankind. The German spirit will be the ultimate victor, as the Greek spirit was in its day victorious, even after Greece became politically powerless. And in the same way that Greece had its day of political revival after the might of its conquerors had long since vanished, and the Greek Empire remained for a thousand years the sanctuary of civilization after its conquerors had disappeared from the stage of history, so Germany will have its day of political resurrection. For world history is world judgment, and injustice cannot endure permanently. That is our inspiration, our hope, and our consolation.