tion of our country to an honored place among the maritime nations of the world after peace has been declared.

No people living unto itself alone has ever been truly great. Commerce has been the world's greatest civilizing influence, and it has frequently happened that wealth and power and the opportunity to serve mankind have been entrusted to nations whose territorial dominions were inconsequent and whose peoples were numerically puny. Their influence was based on the universality of their knowledge of men and climes.

The Phoenicians, greatest merchants of antiquity, wrote their names large and indelibly in the chronicles of the ages, not through the virtue of their statesmen, not through the courage and strategy of their military captains, not through gifts of art, of religion, or of literature, but because from their ports of Tyre and Sidon they set sail on every sea, bringing the raw riches of mines and forests from the outer fringes of the world to Greece, to Egypt, and to the islands of the Mediterranean; because they carried their purples and linens to the princes and potentates of Rome, of Sicily, of Carthage, and to mysterious lands, gardens of the Hesperides, lying beyond the Pillars of Hercules; because they were the great disseminators of the culture of the East through their superior knowledge of the earth's geography, and because they could sail the trackless sea better than any other race of their time.

After the Phoenicians, the next country to establish her unquestioned supremacy on the seas was the great mother of civilization, Italy, whose mariners carried to the ends of the earth the fame of her marvelous city republics, Venice and Genoa. The wealth and power of these great capitals of commerce were founded solely upon ships. Then, as mutual rivalries undermined their world sway, and the discovery of a water route to the Far East brought England and western Europe into communication with the Orient, their prestige waned, and gradually there arose in northern Europe that remarkable maritime association known throughout the middle ages as the Hanseatic League-not a nation, but a world power whose units were bound together by common interests of commerce.

The successive rise and decline of Portugal, Spain, and the Dutch Republic, world powers whose supremacy, one after the other, was founded upon maritime prowess, are familiar to all students of human history.

CIVILIZATION'S DEBT TO BRITAIN

Then came the British Empire, the mother of colonies, whose sway upon the Seven Seas has been maintained for more than two centuries.

British command of the high seas, more than any other instrumentality of modern times, has resulted in the dissemination of light into the dark places of the earth. The Anglo-Saxon has spread his influence on every continent and over the islands of every sea by benevolent assimilation of alien peoples. This enduring sway of British influence, maintained by a girdle of commerce-bearing steel ships, furnishes an illuminating contrast to the ephemeral empire of Alexander, held together solely through the force of fear engendered by the Macedonian phalanx.

A hundred years ago America gave promise of sharing honors with the parent nation, but a combination of circumstances caused the young Republic of the West to withdraw from enterprises for which her mariners and her wonderful shipbuilders had proved her to be so fit.

From 1793 to 1842 more than fourfifths of all the imports and exports of the United States were carried in American bottoms; from 1843 to 1862 the proportion declined to three-fourths. next quarter century saw it diminish to one-fourth, and finally to only a little more than one-tenth, from 1887 to 1913.

The

Now, with our shipyards turning out steel ships, wooden ships, and concrete ships, the auguries seem propitious for that not-distant day when, with all the world at peace, the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes shall float side by side in all the ports on earth and contend in brotherly rivalry for supremacy of speed on every sea. Then will there be an Anglo-Saxon partnership in commercial ventures against which Teutonic aspiration can never raise its bruised head in

menace.

In the meantime, to thwart the common enemy of mankind on land, America will continue to build ships, ships, ships!

T

HE Germans used to complain, before the war, that only a small proportion of the American tourists who visited Europe each summer filtered through to their country. England, France, Belgium, Holland, and Italy got the heavy battalions of the American tourist army. The Germans felt neglected, especially as many of our tourists traveled in their big liners. Berlin even undertook to overcome the handicap of distance by organized attractions designed to make it a rival of Paris. But the percentage of real American tourist travel to Germany was small-most Americans who crossed the Rhine went for purposes of study or business.

During the past summer, however, this situation has entirely changed!

We have sent abroad in three months a number of "tourists" greater than the entire eastbound passenger travel for an average pre-war year-that is, the total eastbound passenger traffic in 1913 over the North Atlantic routes was 718,373, while this summer 300,000 American soldiers have been ferried over the Atlantic in one month. Many of them went in the big German liners, now used as transports by Uncle Sam. Some of them landed in England, others in France, the old tourist points; but every one of them was dominated by the desire to cross the Rhine and visit Germany and interview the Kaiser in Berlin!

Which goes to show, perhaps, that there is always some method of getting things started your way.

BRITAIN, FRANCE, AND ITALY AIDED IN TRANSPORT OF TROOPS

We could never have carried out the big job of transporting troops and supplies to Europe without the help of Great Britain and her Allies. During the past summer, at times of maximum troop movements abroad, British ships have

carried as high as 80 per cent of our soldiers, while more than 50 per cent are now going across in British vessels. Aid has also been furnished us by France and Italy. On September I of this year the United States Shipping Board controlled. nearly 10,000,000 dead-weight tons of merchant ships, comprising seized enemy ships, requisitioned and chartered foreign ships, old American ships pressed into service, and new ships owned by the United States Shipping Board.

THE DIFFICULTIES OF OPERATING OUR MOTLEY FLEET

It is a great Armada, this army supply train to France, for it is almost double the whole German merchant marine at the outbreak of the war. But it is also rather a motley collection of bottomsold ships and new, big ships and little, the Leviathan and the ocean tramp, the steel tanker and the wooden coaster.

Moreover, it is operated under difficulties that have probably never confronted any other nation. We have had to train merchant officers and seamen. There have been complications in loading and unloading, both on this side and abroad, due to the diversity of cargo handled and emergency pressure put upon port facilities. Our Armada, being made up of diverse sizes and speeds, has not lent itself to standard operation. Finally there has been the very definite handicap of convoy traffic, which pulls ships down to moderate speeds, lengthens the average voyage while at sea, and hinders turn-around at the ports, because convoyed ships must wait their place, regardless of efficiency in loading or unloading.

We are doing the job assigned us today with the help of the British, French,. and Italians, and when one remembers that the American military force has been multiplied by five this year, with a cor