ing and the Dutch coast are only at a distance of two hundred and fifty kilometers. Now, there is only wanting the communication between the Ems and the Rhine so that at any moment a German fleet composed of little units could pass, without danger from the Baltic, through the Emperor William Canal, the canal. from the Gulf of Jade to that of Dollart, finally through the canal to be built between the Rhine and the Ems and enter the Channel. "We shall then seize England by the throat"

(Wir sitzen dann England an der gurgel) says the German engineer; and he expatiates with complaisance on the consequences of naval strategy which such a feat would not fail to exert on Great Britain.

"Then," he says, "the hostilities of England against us will cease of themselves, the day she will feel us so near her that a war with us will put her existence in peril. We will be always in ambush, today here, tomorrow there, always indiscernible, ready to leave a sure port to attack and destroy whatever presents itself in weakness to our black divisions, war vessels or ships of commerce. We must threaten English commerce with irreparable losses. We must stop the food supply of England, which is possible only through the sea.” Already-it was in 1912-Groh believed he was in a position to hurl a challenge at Great Britain:

"Furnished with submarines, which we will bring without danger as far as the Channel, we should indeed see if in reality England is unassailable, thanks to her insular position. And on the other hand it is still an open question to know whether the English fleet is truly the first in quality. Since Trafalgar, England has never had the occasion to measure her strength with an adversary who was, even at a distance, equal to her."

Already the construction of dreadnoughts has modified the present strength.

"Before 1904, the ratio of the English forces to ours was as five to one; today it is no more than two to one."

It is true that Great Britain could have

dreadnoughts built by her colonies. Then her superiority would be crushing and irreparable. That only serves to confirm our author in his conclusion:

"The most important thing for us is the passage, without danger and independent of every enemy, from the Baltic to the English Channel by the canal from Dollart to the Jade and through a way of communication from the Rhine to the Ems. These waterways must be like parallels and trenches, thanks to which we shall be able without danger to approach England, situated like a fortress in the middle of the seas."

Groh already discounts the morrow of the victory and utters this cry of triumph.

"In spite of all the ententes cordiales and the friendly alliances, I would indeed like to see the friend who would grieve with England on the day when the English fleet-with the German it is truewould be lodged like a heap of ruins at the bottom of the sea. Germany, after a formidable settlement of accounts, would certainly recover herself at the end of twenty years. But England? She would forever risk her world-wide domination. It would be a combat to the death: as between Rome and Carthage."

The ideas which I have just developed, are all found in a brochure published in 1912 by a German engineer, Groh, and which for its sub-title has these words: "A possible Conquest by technical Means." Every angle of the question is there considered. It is a complete programme of the action which a German chauvinism deprived of scruples and using the necessary power would have to pursue against the little State which holds the mouths of the Rhine.

But I hear one objection: it is that which all those who pointed out the acts and words of the pangermanists encountered before the present war in the allied as well as in neutral countries. The ideas of the men who so loudly and audaciously demanded the greater Germany appeared to be so exalted that people were not willing to believe in their influence on the public opinion of their country. The Panger

manists were too far removed from the mentality of the democratic peoples and from that pacific spirit which they tried to consider as a definitive acquisition of our contemporary civilization. People did not take them serious; they saw in them men isolated, excited, visionary, whose fantasies, if they were not entirely inoffensive, could scarcely be dangerous. They were convinced that the good sense and the calm reflection of the German people would do justice to them before they were able to bring about an armed conflict and provoke disasters.

That is why after having developed the question of the derivation of the Rhine, I must show that the author cited is but a link of a long chain. His book is a part of a campaign the origin of which goes back very far and which the years have but served to augment in precision, in vigor and extent up to the moment when the present war has for the time being effaced all present interest in the conquests which the means of peace time would permit.

THE ORIGIN OF THE IDEA OF A CANAL FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEA

The first origins of the idea are found, under the modest form of a simple utilizable communication for the navigation of fresh water in official documents published some years after the foundation of the Empire. In 1877, a memorial presented by the Prussian Government to the Chamber of Deputies set up the importance which a navigable way which would bind the Rhine with the Weser and the Elbe would have for commerce and the navy. But this idea was nowise developed and led to no practical conclusion.

Five years later, the Prussian Government took a step further: a legislative bill proposed the construction of such a canal within the dimensions of all those which were built in the interior of the country. At this moment we see already appearing a political question. In fact, the Government declared in the reasons:

"The new direction of the canal has the very appreciable advantage of assuring to the navigation not only of the mining.

country of Westphalia, but of the whole basin of the Rhine towards the sea, the desirable and even urgent independence of the foreigner."

At this period the legislative bill, moreover awkwardly reasoned, was rejected by the Prussian Parliament. When it was again presented in 1886, the political considerations were more precisely set forth. Before the Commission of the Prussian Chamber, they leaned very particularly on

"the major interest which the possession, in the North Sea, of ports independent of the foreigner, and connected by a waterway with the great Rheno-Westphalian industrial country, would represent for Germany, and more especially for Prussia. Thus considered, the canal signifies the transfer of the mouths of the Rhine to the German North Sea."

At that moment, we find a threat addressed to Holland in the official records of the Commission:

"The foreigner will have to take account of these facts, and he then will have the regards for Germany in the international commercial questions in which he has hitherto been wanting, strong as he was in his preponderant situation. The commerce with the colonies in place of passing through the Dutch and Belgian ports will henceforth be sent through Emden towards all western Germany.

Following these debates, a law of the 6 July, 1886, decided upon the construction of a navigable way destined to connect the Rhenish country with the Gulf of Dollart.

The still modest intentions of the authors of this work are manifested not only in the proportions of the canal which was navigable only for light draught-boats, but again in the fact that it terminated at Dortmund. It was, therefore, at that time a matter neither of the derivation of the Rhine, nor of a maritime canal accessible to sea vessels. The canal from Dortmund to the Ems was finished and inaugurated in 1899 (*). At this moment the ambitions of Germany had singularly increased.

*See Geitel. Der Bau des Dortmund-Ems-Kanals. Berlin, 1892. Dortmund-Ems-Kanal Festschrift zur Erinnerung an die feierliche 3. August 1899. Barope 1899.

T

HIS war is likely to open up such vast possibilities for international trade that any reflections concerning the trade future of America, or any attempt to direct American thought therein, should be very carefully considered.

I believe that the world war is ushering in a new day for men and nations. I believe, as a result of this war, the intercourse between men and nations will be closer and for greater mutual benefits than ever before. I think I foresee intensive home development in all countries and intensive international development.

As soon as machinery can be produced the farmer is going to come into his own as a manufacturer and the world will produce its food with far less human labor. Overseas trade will knit the tropics with the temperate, and with the cold zones, and the fruits of the tropics will be spread over the earth. The products of the industries of the earth must expand overseas into the tropics and North and South. There must be intensive agriculture by human intelligence and machinery and there must be intensive interchange of products throughout the whole world.

Development of nations and international relations can progress only as the individual is developed. The great danger in the world has been the narrow view of the individual. If he is an agriculturist he may know little besides crops, weather, production and the prices he receives. He may have no broad view as to how he can improve the farm as his home, and occupation for his children, or how he can receive more in return benefits for what his hands create. In relation to the rest of the world, he may be sinking in the earth, under the competitive system, as just "the man with a hoe."

His children may desire a larger world and, entering the factory, are there exploited by

both capital leaders and labor leaders. The wages that looked large to the farmer boy, leaves no surplus when spent in the city. The opportunity for a larger life, for a broader education is really diminished. He may join a labor union, or a socialistic gathering and advocate higher wages by strikes and the confiscation of the accumulated wealth that gives him employment. In both struggles he finds the loss falls upon himself. From the country to the city, he has narrowed his field. His wages are higher, his hours of labor shorter. But in lieu of fresh air, pure milk and fresh vegetables, he has steam-heated air and cold storage food with no natural flavor. He has the "movies" and the one-cent picture papers called newspapers. The philosophers may tell him that the only road to progress for himself and his nation is the shake-up of war, that he must taut his muscles by military training for national defense, and that he must become a man by fighting. He adopts the policy so far as to fight the existing order, the timeclock, efficiency systems, his employers and the man who in public office does not vote to reduce the hours of labor and tax the increment of capital. In the end, he demands of the Government an old age pension. The church and state social order, and factory employment are all to him failures, and he leaves nothing behind but pleasant memories of early days on the farm.

His views are all narrow. He has tried to dodge the burden of labor and has met with that which is worse, the burden of poverty. He is ready to vote for the overturn of the social order which must be all wrong, because it has not helped him. He is unconscious of the fact that he has not helped himself.

Now, what is the trouble with him, his education, his situation?

It is the narrowness of his outlook. Except for the district school and some books and