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threw in her weight behind it. Without her aid Great Britain
and France could not have continued economically and financially
till 1918, nor could they have ejected Germany from Belgium and
Northern France without the assistance of the 2,000,000 American
soldiers in Europe in that year. President Wilson attempted to
make the world a safe place to live in by trying to induce the
whole world to go democratic and low tariff, and to substitute
for British sea power and the balance of power the system of
the League of Nations. It was a magnificient conception. But
the world was not ready for it, and to-day not only has the League
gone but the alternative system of preserving liberty over half
the world, the control of the seas by Great Britain alone coupled
with something approximating to free trade is rapidly disappearing
also. On the one hand economic nationalism and still more totalitarian
economics are undermining the old free capitalist exchange. On
the other hand the strategic balance is going rapidly against
Great Britain. The population of Germany is 90,000,000 of Italy
is 45,000,000, of Japan is 70,000,000, and all of these countries
are now on a war basis. The population of Great Britain is 45,000,000
and of France about the same. Both are only half on a war basis.
With Russia for the time being outside the picture, there is
now a balance of some 200,000,000 peoples organised on totalitarian
lines, against about l00,000,000, including the overseas Dominions,
organised on democratic lines, though the latter are still in
possession of the strategic keys to sea power.
Two possible conclusions can be drawn from this. One is that
the United States is once more going to be confronted, as it
was indeed in 1917, with the choice of whether, with her population
of 130,000,000 and immense