fields of shipping and
banking. One consequence is that American enterprise has now the golden
opportunity to capture a good share of each. The outbreak of the war and
the simultaneous opening of the Panama Canal will tend to divert the
course of trade from Europe to South America. Probably our merchant
marine can be developed more successfully for this South American trade
than it could for the European trade. New York can largely take the
place of London as the world's exchange centre for Pan-American trade.
This opportunity is increased by the possibilities in the new Banking
act for the establishment of branch banks abroad.

With these opportunities and the rise of interest in Europe, the United
States will change to a great degree from a debtor to a creditor nation.

One of the dislocations of the war in the United States will be the
cutting off of imports of a large part of our dutiable commodities, and
therefore the loss of national revenue. There is an urgent need to
compensate for this loss by some other form of tax.

But it is well not to lose perspective, to remember that dislocations
are not necessarily losses, that, however loudly they are proclaimed in
news columns, they are small in extent, when considered in relation to
our whole trade, that this country of ours is a vast one, and that the
rank and file of Americans will be but slightly affected by the
war--especially by contrast with our friends, now fighting each other,
across the sea.

We are too nearly self-supporting to be prostrated. Our foreign trade is
and always has been a trifling matter compared with our internal
commerce. The internal commerce paid for by money and checks annually
in the United States amounts to nearly five hundred billions of dollars,
which is more than a hundred times as much as our combined exports and
imports.

Almost all of what has been said so far had grown out of the prospect
that the prices of foods and other materials needed in Europe will be
high, while the prices of securities which Europe does not need and
cannot afford will be low. Other prices will rise or fall according to
special circumstances. Like a bomb-shell, the effect of the war will be
to disperse or scatter prices at all angles of rises and falls. The
prices of luxuries will be lowered. The prices of chemicals will be
raised. The same article will fall in price in one country and rise in
another if the transportation from the former to the latte