No such fate has overtaken the United States. On the contrary her path has been smoothed before her feet. Inhabiting a garden spot, her immense territory gains in the past hundred and fifty years have been made with less effort than it has cost Japan to gain and hold Korea or England to maintain her dominion over Ireland. Once established, the old-world empire was not secure. If the territory that it possessed was worth having, it was surrounded by hungry-eyed nations that took the first occasion to band together and despoil the spoiler. The holding of an empire was as great a task as the building of empire--often greater because of the larger outlay in men and money that was involved in an incessant warfare. Little by little the glory faded; step by step militarism made its inroads upon the normal life of the people, until the time came for the stronger rival to overthrow the mighty one, or until the inrushing hordes of barbarians should blot out the features of civilization, and enthrone chaos once more. How different has been the fate of the people of the United States! Possessed of what is probably the richest, for the purposes of the present civilization, of any territory of equal size in the world, their isolation has allowed them more than a century of practical freedom from outside interference--a century that they have been able to devote to internal development. The absence of greedy neighbors has reduced the expense of military preparation to a minimum; the old world has failed to realize, until within the last few years, what were the possibilities of the new country; vitality has remained unimpaired, wealth has piled up, industry has been promoted, and on each occasion when a greater extent of territory was required, it has been obtained at a cost that, compared with the experience of other nations, must be described as negligible. So simple has been the process of empire building for the United States; so natural have been the stages by which the American Empire has been evolved; so little have the changes disturbed the routine of normal life that the American people are, for the most part, unaware of the imperial position of their country. They still feel, think and talk as if the United States were a tiny corner, fenced off from the rest of the world to which it owed nothing and from which it expected nothing. The American Empire has been built, as were the palaces of Aladdin, in a night. The morning is dawning, and the early risers who were not even awakened from their slumbers by the sound of hammer and engine, are beginning to rub their eyes, and to ask one another what is the meaning of this apparition, and whether it is real. 4. _The Will to Power_