n fact, it would be hard
to find in a crowded street in the United States one in a thousand of
the passersby who knew more than the name, at most, of one of those very
few countries referred to.

Europe's preoccupation with the war temporarily deprives such a country
and its few misguided prophets whose monomania is dread of that chimera,
the "Colossus of the North," of the pastime of nestling up to Europe in
the hope of annoying us. It postpones, too, the hope of the morbid ones
that we shall come to war with a powerful enemy. Now, perhaps, even
these will appreciate the remark of a diplomatist of a certain weak
country in contact with European powers, who once said: "If we only had
the United States for a neighbor! What I can't understand is that your
neighbors do not realize their good luck." Turning from these
exceptional phenomena, the very fact of the war leaves the United States
in a general position of greater political prestige.

Whatever the upshot of the European tragedy, its political and
psychological consequences are likely to be great. If it result in new
national divisions upon racial lines of more reality, who knows but that
the awakened spirits of nationality will germinate fresh military
ambitions? Or will the horrors of the war force political reforms and
the search for assurance in more democratic institutions against any
repetition of those horrors? And is popular government an assurance
against useless war while men remain warlike even when not military?

Except from the successful countries or from those where disaster has
brought such sobering change that men can return to work heartened with
new hope, when the war is over there is likely to be a heavy emigration
of disgusted people. Possibly even victory will be so dear that men will
emigrate from a country half prostrate in its triumph. Many will come as
the Puritans came, and as the bulk of our own excellent Germanic element
came, and will cast in their lot with a new nation. We shall get a good
share, but doubtless some will go to the republics of the far South, and
some to the highlands of the tropics and through the canal to the West
Coast. If so, this will tend gradually toward increased production and
purchasing power, as well as toward a leavening of social, political,
and economic conditions of life.

If the war were indecisive or left all the combatants more or less
prostrated, peaceful immigration might give a big impulse to the