And in this secret warfare England prevailed, since when the
legislation of the United States has made American competition with
England on the sea impossible. Wherefore we have had peace with England.
We have supplied Great Britain with food and raw materials, abandoning to
England the carrying trade and an undisputed naval supremacy. Consequently
Great Britain feels secure and responds to the full force of that economic
attraction which makes America naturally, a component part of the British
economic system. But let American pretensions once again revive to the
point of causing her to attempt seriously to develop her sea power as of
yore, and the same friction would also revive which could hardly, were it
pushed to its legitimate end, eventuate otherwise than in the ultimate
form of all economic competition.
If such a supposition seems now to be fanciful, it is only necessary to
reflect a moment on the rapidity with which national relations vary under
competition, to be assured that it is real. As Washington said, the only
force which binds one nation to another is interest. The rise of Germany,
which first created jealousy in England, began with the attack on Denmark
in 1864. Then Russia was the power which the British most feared and with
whom they were on the worst of terms. About that period nothing would have
seemed more improbable than that these relations would be reversed, and
that Russia and England would jointly, within a generation, wage fierce
war on Germany.
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