It is not strange that so many controversies about more or less trivial matters should have obscured in the minds of both Englishmen and Americans the fundamental identity of aim and purpose in the larger things of life. For notwithstanding the German influence in America which has had an undue part in shaping our educational methods, our civilization is still English. Bismarck realized this when he said that one of the most significant facts in modern history was that all North America was English-speaking. Our fundamental ideals are the same. We have a passion for liberty; we uphold the rights of the individual as against the extreme claims of the state; we believe in government through public opinion; we believe in the rule of law; we believe in government limited by fundamental principles and constitutional restraints as against the exercise of arbitrary power; we have never been subjected to militarism or to the dominance of a military caste; we are both so situated geographically as to be dependent on sea power rather than on large armies, and not only do navies not endanger the liberty of peoples but they are negligible quantities politically. Great Britain had in 1914 only 137,500 officers and men in her navy and 26,200 reserves, a wholly insignificant number compared to the millions that formed the army of Germany and gave a military color to the whole life and thought of the nation. Not only are our political ideals the same, but in general our attitude toward world politics is the same, and most people are surprised when they are told that our fundamental foreign policies are identical. The two most characteristic American foreign policies, the Monroe Doctrine and the Open Door, were both, as we have seen, Anglo-American in origin. VII IMPERIALISTIC TENDENCIES OF THE MONROE DOCTRINE