The Americans secured real advantages from the war. They grew immensely rich in profiteering during the first three years, they emerged with a relatively small debt, with no great loss of life, and with the greatest economic surpluses and the greatest immediate economic advantages possessed by any nation of the world. The British Empire was the acknowledged mistress of the world in 1913. Her nearest rival (Germany) had one battleship to her two; one ton of merchant shipping to her three, and two dollars of foreign investments to her five. This rivalry was punished as the successive rivals of the British Empire have been punished for three hundred years. The war was won by the British Empire and her Allies, but in the hour of victory a new rival appeared. By 1920 that rival had a naval program which promised a fleet larger than the British fleet in 1924 or 1925; within three years she had increased her merchant tonnage to two-thirds of the British tonnage, and her foreign investments were three times the foreign investments of Great Britain. This new rival was the American Empire--whose immense economic strength constituted an immediate threat to the world power of Great Britain. 5. _The Next Incident in the Great War_ Some nation, or some group of nations has always been in control of the known world or else in active competition for the right to exercise such a control. The present is an era of competition. Capitalism has revolutionized the world's economic life. By 1875 the capitalist nations were in a mad race to determine which one should dominate the capitalist world and have first choice among the undeveloped portions of the earth. The competitors were Great Britain, Germany, France, Russia and Italy. Japan and the United States did not really enter the field for another generation. The War of 1914 decided this much:--that France and Italy were too weak to play the big game in a big way, that Germany could not compete effectively for some time to come; that the Russians would no longer play the old game at all. There remained Japan, Great Britain and the United States and it is among these three nations that the capitalist world is now divided. Japan is in control of the Far East. Great Britain holds the Near East, Africa and Australia; the United States dominates the Western Hemisphere. The Great War began in 1914. It will end when the question is decided as to which of these three empires will control the Earth. Great Britain has been the dominant factor in the world for a century. She gained her position after a terrific struggle, and she has maintained it by vanquishing Holland, Spain, France and Germany.