For, of course, as between the older and the newer worlds there has gone on this very beneficent division of labor:  the Old World having developed its soil, built its cities, made its roads, has more capital available for outside employment than have the population of newer countries that have so much of this work before them.  And now this possibility of fruitful co-operation is, for the time being, and it may be for many years, suspended.  I say nothing of the loss of markets in the older countries which will be occasioned by sheer loss of population and the lower standard of living.  That is one of the more obvious but not perhaps the most important of the ways in which the war affects us commercially.

Speaking purely in terms of commercial advantage—­and these, I know, do not tell the whole story (I am not for a moment pretending they do)—­the losses that we shall suffer through this war are probably very much more considerable than those we should suffer by the loss of the Philippines in the event, say, of their being seized by some hostile power; and we suffer these losses, although not a single foreign soldier lands upon our soil.  It is literally and precisely true to say that there is not one person from Hudson Bay to Cape Horn that will not be affected in some degree by what is now going on in Europe.  And it is at least conceivable that our children and children’s children will feel its effects more deeply still.

Nor is America escaping the military any more than she has escaped the commercial and financial effects of this war.  She may never be drawn into active military co-operation with other nations, but she is affected none the less.  Indeed the military effects of this war are already revealing themselves in a demand for a naval programme immensely larger than any American could have anticipated a year ago, by plans for an enormously enlarged army.  All this is the most natural result.

Just consider, for instance, the ultimate effect of a quite possible outcome of the present conflict—­Germany victorious and the Prussian effort next directed at, say, the conquest of India.  Imagine India Prussianized by Germany, so that, with the marvelous efficiency in military organization which she has shown, she is able to draw on an Asiatic population of something approaching 400,000,000.

Whether the situation then created would really constitute a menace for us or not, this much would be certain—­that the more timid and timorous among us would believe it to be a menace, and it would furnish an irresistible plea for a very greatly enlarged naval and military establishment.  We too, in that case would probably be led to organize our nation on the lines on which the European military nations have organized theirs, with compulsory military service, and so forth.