American people into a war-frenzy against the British Empire.

Were there no economic rivalries, such antagonisms might slumber for
decades, but with the economic struggle so active, these other matters
will be kept continually in the foreground.

The capitalists of Great Britain have faced dark days and have
surmounted huge obstacles. They are not to be turned back by the threat
of rivalry. The American capitalists are backed by the greatest
available surpluses in the world; they are ambitious, full of enthusiasm
and energy, they are flushed with their recent victory in the world war,
and overwhelmed by the unexpected stores of wealth that have come to
them as a result of the conflict. They are imbued with a boundless faith
in the possibilities of their country. Neither Great Britain nor the
United States is in a frame of mind to make concessions. Each is
confident--the British with the traditional confidence of centuries of
world leadership; the Americans with the buoyant, idealistic confidence
of youth. It is one against the other until the future supremacy of the
world is decided.

6. _The Imperial Task_

American business interests are engaged in the work of building an
international business structure. American industry, directed from the
United States, exploiting foreign resources for American profit, and
financed by American institutions, is gaining a footing in Latin
America, in Europe and Asia.

The business men of Rome built such a structure two thousand years ago.
They competed with and finally crushed their rivals in Tyre, Corinth and
Carthage. In the early days of the Empire, they were the economic
masters, as well as the political masters of the known world.

Within two centuries the business men of Great Britain have built an
international business structure that has known no equal since the days
of the Caesars. Perhaps it is greater, even, than the economic empire of
the Romans. At any rate, for a century that British empire of commerce
and industry has gone unchallenged, save by Germany. Germany has been
crushed. But there is an industrial empire rising in the West. It is
new. Its strength is as yet undetermined. It is uncoordinated. A new era
has dawned, however, and the business men of the United States have made
up their minds to win the economic supremacy of the earth.

Already the war is on between Great Britain and the United States. The
two countries are just as much at war to-day as Gr