exclusive authority, and it may cover a declaration of direct suzerainty over Mexico, and over the smaller republics intervening between the United States border and the Panama Canal. In most Latin-American republics disorder is the rule rather than the exception; and it may become at any moment the honest opinion of the man-in-the-street of the United States that the Panama Canal is too important to civilisation to be left to the chances of interference from less stable governments than his own. These conclusions are inevitable to anyone making any study of American history and the American character. They are not hostile criticisms. They are rather appreciations. A great nation with a belief in its destiny must be "Imperialist" in spirit, because it has a natural desire to spread the blessings of its rule. The people of the United States believe as strongly in themselves as did the ancient Hebrews, and all must have a genuine respect for that fierce spirit of elect nationality which made the Hebrews found a great nation on a goat-patch. In Elizabethan England the same spirit flourished and was responsible for the founding of the British Empire. (It survives still in the British Isles, though somewhat spasmodically.) There is no ground at all either for wonder or for complaint in the fact that Imperialism has been born to vigorous life in the United States, where the people of "God's own country" are firm in these two articles of faith: that any interference in the affairs of the United States is unjust, unnecessary, tyrannical and impious; that any United States interference with another nation is a necessary and salutary effort on behalf of civilisation. Let no man of British blood complain. But let no one in making calculations of world policy be deceived into any other conclusion than that the United States is the great Imperial force of this century, and also the one Power that has enough of the splendid illusions of youth to indulge in crusading wars, for which Europe nowadays is too old and cautious. In the countries of Europe other than Great Britain that which I have stated is coming to be generally recognised, and if at any time a combination could be proposed with any hope of success "to put America in her place," the combination would be formed and the Old World would grapple with the New to try conclusions. Without Great Britain, however, such an alliance would have at present no chance of success, and British adherence is not within the realm of practical thought to-day.