ABSTRACT
“Europe,” as an American critic has truly said, “is in its political arrangements the most backward of the Continents.” Compared with the crazy patchwork of Western Europe, the political and economic framework of other parts of the world is amazingly simple. The economic effects of the industrialisation of Asia are, indeed, of very great importance, though it is impossible to examine them. But the risks of war arising from the investment of European or American capital in Asia have been noticed. In the relations of the United States to the countries of Europe, and in their bearing on the prospects of peace, there are four factors of chief importance, war debts, armaments, commercial interests and political isolation. The United States, meanwhile, has been settling with her European “war-debtors”, one by one. For many centuries Europe west of Russia has dominated the rest of the world. Great initial advantages in civilisation, in science, in wealth and trade, in colonising power.
