er latest rival in the competition for world power. Between them,
to-day, most of the world is divided. The British Empire includes the
Near East, Southern Asia, Africa, Australia and half of North America.
Dogging her are Germany, France, Russia and Italy, and, as she goes to
the Far East,--Japan. The United States holds the Western Hemisphere,
where she is supreme, with no enemy worthy the name.

The British power was shaken by the War of 1914. Never, in modern times,
had the British themselves, been compelled to do so much of the actual
fighting. The war debt and the disorganization of trade incident to the
war period proved serious factors in the curtailment of British economic
supremacy. At the same time, the territorial gains of the British were
enormous, particularly in the Near East.

The Americans secured real advantages from the war. They grew immensely
rich in profiteering during the first three years, they emerged with a
relatively small debt, with no great loss of life, and with the greatest
economic surpluses and the greatest immediate economic advantages
possessed by any nation of the world.

The British Empire was the acknowledged mistress of the world in 1913.
Her nearest rival (Germany) had one battleship to her two; one ton of
merchant shipping to her three, and two dollars of foreign investments
to her five. This rivalry was punished as the successive rivals of the
British Empire have been punished for three hundred years.

The war was won by the British Empire and her Allies, but in the hour of
victory a new rival appeared. By 1920 that rival had a naval program
which promised a fleet larger than the British fleet in 1924 or 1925;
within three years she had increased her merchant tonnage to two-thirds
of the British tonnage, and her foreign investments were three times the
foreign investments of Great Britain. This new rival was the American
Empire--whose immense economic strength constituted an immediate threat
to the world power of Great Britain.

5. _The Next Incident in the Great War_

Some nation, or some group of nations has always been in control of the
known world or else in active competition for the right to exercise such
a control. The present is an era of competition.

Capitalism has revolutionized the world's economic life. By 1875 the
capitalist nations were in a mad race to determine which one should
dominate the capitalist world and have first choice among the
undeveloped po