In 1898 a war, giving us lessons similar to those of the Japanese wars, broke out between the United States and Spain. The disproportion of material resources was great, and was in favor of the United States. Yet in the early part of the sixteenth century, Spain had been esteemed by many to be the greatest of all the powers, while the territory later held by the United States was the wild domain of savages. Why had Spain fallen so far below a country so new, living three thousand miles away from the civilization of Europe? Because she had lost her vision; because she had become infected with the disease of sordidness which quickly-gotten wealth, especially ill-gotten wealth, has often brought to nations; because she had ceased to encourage such bright visions as she had encouraged in the days of Columbus and Magellan, and settled down in the torpor of unimaginativeness. The United States, on the other hand, had been seeing such visions and following them to learn what lay beyond; and had been embodying all that could be embodied in practical projects and machines and methods and instrumentalities of all kinds. The United States had been taking all possible advantage of the potentialities of invention, but Spain had not. An important result of this war was the proof, and its utilization on a large scale in Cuba and other Spanish-American countries, that the mosquito is a carrier of the infections of yellow fever and many other diseases. Hardly had this war finished, when a war broke out in 1899 between Great Britain and the Boer Republic in South Africa. It is an evidence of the important influence of invention that it was possible for Great Britain to wage effective war so far away, and finally to triumph. She triumphed mainly because of the superior power of her military machine; but she had been able to construct and to improve it continually by her persistent utilization of the possibilities of invention. The possibilities that she had utilized became especially conspicuous when the necessity came for transporting the necessary troops and guns and munitions and supplies over the vast ocean spaces intervening, and for handling them on a foreign soil; under conditions very novel, and against a wary and yet skilfull and aggressive foe.