What economic value to the world has a nation which for more than forty years has concentrated all its energy in peaceful industry? Does any one deny that Germany's great technical and commercial advancement has been a blessing in respect to the development of the world? Has not the commercial advancement in Germany had the effect of awakening new productive powers in all parts of the world and of adding new territories which engage in the exchange of goods with the civilized nations of the world? Since the founding of the new German Empire, German foreign trade has increased from 5-1/2 to approximately 20 billion marks. Germany has become the best customer of a great number of countries. Not only has the German consumption of provisions and luxuries increased in an unusual degree, also that of meat, tropical fruits, sugar, tobacco and colonial products, but above all else that of raw materials, such as coal, iron, copper and other metals, cotton, petroleum, wood, skins, &c. Germany furnishes a market for articles of manufacture also, for American machinery, English wool, French luxury articles, &c. One is absolutely wrong in the belief that the competition of German industry in the world market has been detrimental to other commercial nations. Legitimate competition increases the business of all concerned. The United States of America has reaped especial profit from Germany's flourishing commercial condition. Germany purchases more from the United States of America than from any other country of the world. Germany buys annually from the United States of America approximately $170,000,000 worth of cotton, $75,000,000 worth of copper, $60,000,000 worth of wheat, $40,000,000 animal fat, $20,000,000 mineral oil and the same amount of vegetable oil. In 1890 the import and export trade between Germany and the United States amounted to only $100,000,000, in 1913 to about $610,000,000. Germany today imports from the United States goods to the value of $430,000,000, while she exports to the United States nearly $180,000,000 worth. No nation therefore can judge as well as the United States what German commerce means to the world.