There is also a possible social difficulty to be faced by the United States. The present differences between rich and poor are too extreme to be safe. Too many of the rich despise the poor on the ground that to be poor is to be a failure: too many of the poor hate the rich with a wolfish hatred as successful bandits. The quick growth of material prosperity has cloaked over this class feeling. When there were good crumbs for everybody the too-great wealth of the rich was not so obvious. But the time comes when the United States is no longer a Tom Tiddler's ground where everybody can pick up something: and the rivalry between those who have too much and those who have too little begins to show nakedly. In short, the United States, justified as she is to keep a superb confidence in her own resources, might find a policy of hostile rivalry to the British Power in the Pacific an impossible one to carry through, for it would not be wise statesmanship on her part to presume that her future history will be, at home and abroad, an uninterrupted course of prosperity. There is no need to presume that hostile rivalry. On the other hand, there is no wisdom in following blindly a policy of drift which may lead to that rivalry. The question of the future of the Pacific narrows down to this: Will two great Powers, sprung from the same race, take advantage of a common tongue to talk out frankly, honestly, their aims and purpose so that they may arrive at a common understanding? There are some obstacles to such an understanding. The first is American diplomacy, which, whilst truthful to the point of brusqueness, is strangely reluctant to avow its real objects, for the reason, I think, that it often acts without admitting even its own mind into confidence. The boy who makes his way to the unguarded apple orchard does not admit to himself that he is after apples. He professes to like the scenery in that direction. American diplomacy acts in the same way. It would have been impossible, for instance, to have obtained from the American Government ten years ago a confidential declaration, in a friendly way, of the Pacific policy which is now announced. Yet it should have been quite plain to the American mind after the seizure of the Philippines and the fortification of Hawaii, if the American mind would have consented to examine into itself. Now, it is not possible for two great nations to preserve a mutual friendship without a mutual confidence.