fairs.[378:1] He sees the shadow of
America's commercial domination already falling across Europe; and, so
far as France is concerned, he discerns only two directions from which
help can come. He pleads with young Frenchmen to travel more, so that
the rising generation may be less ignorant of the commercial conditions
of the modern world and may see more clearly what it is that they have
to fight, and, second, he points to the Colonial Empire of France, with
an area not much inferior to that of the United States, and believes
that therein may be laid the foundations of a commercial power which
will be not unable to cope even with that of America.

It may be only the arrogance and superciliousness of the Anglo-Saxon
that prevent one sharing the sanguineness of M. Hanotaux as to any
relief coming to the help of France from these two sources, for British
hopes can only lie in analogous directions. Englishmen also need to
understand better the conditions which have to be met and the power of
their competitors; and it is the young men who must learn. Also, if it
be impossible that the British Isles should hold their own against the
United States, there appears no reason why the British Empire should not
be abundantly able to do so.

It is not easy for one who has not lived all his life in England to
share the satisfaction with which the English papers commonly welcome
the intelligence that some great American manufacturing concern is
establishing branch works in Canada. It is well for Canada that such
works should be established; but it is pitiable for the Empire that it
should be left to the United States to establish them. British capital
was the chief instrumentality with which the United States was enabled
to build its own railways and conduct the other great enterprises for
the development of the resources of its mighty West, and it is, from the
point of view of a British Imperialist, deplorable that British
capitalists should not now be ready to take those risks for the sake of
the Empire which American capital is willing to take with no other
incentive than the probable trade profits.

His conservatism, it should be noticed, has a tendency to fall away from
the Englishman when he goes out from the environment and atmosphere of
the British Isles. The Canadian, or the Englishman who has gone to
Canada young enough to imbibe the colonial spirit, is not easily to be
distinguished from the citizen of the United States in