During the first six months of 1914, German export trade almost equalled that of Great Britain.  Another year of peace, and it would certainly have exceeded it, and for the first time in the history of world trade Great Britain would have been put in the second place.  German exports from January to June had swelled to the enormous total of $1,045,000,000 as against the $1,075,000,000 of Great Britain.  A war against such figures could not be maintained in the markets, it must be transferred to the seas.

Day by day as the war proceeds, although it is now only six weeks old, the pretences under which it was begun are being discarded.  England fights not to defend the neutrality of Belgium, not to destroy German militarism, but to retain, if need be by involving the whole world in war, her supreme and undisputed ownership of the seas.

This is the crime against Europe, the crime against the world that, among other victims the United States are invited to approve, in order that to-morrow their own growing navy may be put into a like posture with that of a defeated Germany.

With the Kiel Canal “handed to Denmark,” as one of the fruits of British victory, as Lord Charles Beresford yesterday magnanimously suggested, how long may it be before the Panama Canal shall be found to be “a threat to peace” in the hands of those who constructed it?

A rival fleet in being, whether the gunners be Teuton or Anglo-Saxon unless the Admiralty controlling it is seated at Whitehall, will always be an eyesore to the Mistress of the seas, in other words, “a threat to the peace of the world.”

The war of armaments cannot be ended by the disarming of the German people.  To hand Europe over to a triumphal alliance of Russian and French militarism, while England controls the highways and waterways of mankind by a fleet whose function is “to dictate the maritime law of nations,” will beget indeed a new Europe, but a Europe whose acquiescence is due to fear and the continued pressure of well-sustained force—­a Europe submitted to the despotism of unnatural alliances designed to arrest the laws of progress.

The laws of progress demand that efficiency shall prevail.  The crime of Germany has been superior efficiency, not so much in the arts of war as in the products of peace.  If she go down to-day before a combination of brute force and unscrupulous intelligence her fall cannot be permanent.  Germany has within herself the forces that ensure revival, and revival means recovery.  Neither France nor Russia nor both combined, can give to Europe what Britain now designs to take from it by their help.