craft will now have an enormous advantage over
destroyers or cruisers. Here, as a century ago, many an American will
find an opportunity to make a fortune.

The preoccupation of Europe with the war and the opening of the Panama
Canal will afford the United States an unrivaled opportunity to develop
trade with Canada, South America, Australia, New Zealand, India, China,
and the Far East in general. We have never bulked large in the eyes of
these countries and there has been much speculation as to the reasons
why the German succeeded so well in South America and why the Englishman
did so much business in China. Whether from sentiment or from a national
habit that prefers English goods, the English colonies have bought more
largely of the mother country than they have of us. But now that the war
has closed the German factories, called German commercial agents home,
and sent German ships racing to neutral harbors; now that the Panama
Canal brings us some thousands of miles nearer to Australia and New
Zealand than they are to London via Suez; now that England will be busy
manufacturing for Europe and will have less to sell her colonies, these
particular parts of the world will probably be compelled to look for
their manufactured goods to the United States. Indeed, if one were not
afraid of being accused of gross exaggeration, he might take heart and
proclaim his conviction that a long and really inclusive European war
would give the United States a practical monopoly of the South American
and Pacific trade, provided always that the United States acquire by
purchase a merchant marine and that the Panama Canal becomes feasible in
January for large ships.

Foreigners Leaving America

One other effect of the war has already begun to reveal itself in the
emigration from America of thousands of Servians, Austrians, Russians,
Germans, Frenchmen, going home to take their places in the ranks. While
many of these men are brave and honorable citizens, the fact that they
respond to such a call proves them not yet Americans. The war will tend
to remove a goodly part of the distinctly foreign element in the
country, the part not yet amalgamated, and therefore the part most alien
to our institutions and the most difficult to place in our social
structure. If the war continues, Europe will draw every able-bodied man
who can be influenced to go. Far more important, immigration will
probably become negligible not only during the war, but