"But the business successes of the neutral European shipping firms are far surpassed by the earnings of the Japanese overseas lines. Thus the largest Japanese shipping firm, Nippon Yusen Kaisha, that sails from East Asia to all the important shipping markets, had a net profit in the summer half-year 1916 of 19,780,000 yen (the Japanese yen is equivalent to $0.498 United States currency); in the winter half-year 1916--17 actually 22,150,000; in a single fiscal year it earned, therefore, about 42,000,000 yen. The company's capital stock amounted at the end of the fiscal year 1916--17, after a previous increase through the distribution of free shares, to 27,500,000 yen, the net profits of this single company being thus about 15,000,000 yen more than the amount of the capital. "The company's fleet has grown considerably. The total available reserves amount to nearly 63,000,000 yen. Of ready money the company had at its disposal at the end of March, 1917, 55,300,000 yen." GERMANS AT WORK IN SPAIN Germany's astuteness in dealing with neutral countries was especially marked in Spain. The country was filled with German propaganda and there were skeleton German trade organizations ready to begin functioning at a moment's notice. The extent to which this propaganda was carried on was described by a correspondent of the _Saturday Evening Post_, Mr. I. F. Marcosson, in an address to the National Machine Tool Builders' Association at Atlantic City: "The German propagandists have carried on a campaign on the proposition of the Kaiser. It has been the finest selling campaign that I have ever seen. They have organized it. Each man had his territory, his selling territory; each man has his line of samples, and that line of samples was the finest lot of German gold and German 'hot air' that any propaganda has ever produced. "The Germans have sold Spain on the proposition of German trade and German good-will, because they are giving the Spaniard, as they did in business before the war, what the Spaniard had in mind. "Germany went into Spain to fill the Spaniard with 'hot air' and to tell him he was the finest aristocrat in the world. And he got it over. And if you had gone, as I have, from one end of Spain to the other and looked into these great warehouses you would have found hundreds of them jammed and packed with copper and oil and cotton, and all the material with which to re-establish a great industry. And today, whenever there is a water-right for sale, whenever there is stock for sale, or whenever anything can be leased, or a factory can be bought, who buys it? =The Germans.=