United States, more or less, into eccentricity; but were England to prevail the United States would tend to become the centre toward which all else would gravitate. Hence, perfectly automatically, from a time as long ago as the Spanish War, the balance, as indicated by the weight of the United States, hung unevenly as between Germany and England, Germany manifesting something approaching to repulsion toward the attraction of the United States while Great Britain manifested favor. And from subsequent evidence, this phenomenon would seem to have been thus early developed, because the economic centre of gravity of our modern civilization had already traversed the Atlantic, and by so doing had decided the fortunes of Germany in advance, in the greater struggle about to come. Consider attentively what has happened. In April, 1917, when the United States entered the conflict, Germany, though it had suffered severely in loss of men, was by no means exhausted. On the contrary, many months subsequently she began her final offensive, which she pushed so vigorously that she penetrated to within some sixty miles of Paris. But there, at Château Thierry, on the Marne, she first felt the weight of the economic shift. She suddenly encountered a division of American troops advancing to oppose her. Otherwise the road to Paris lay apparently open. The American troops were raw levies whom the Germans pretended to despise. And yet, almost without making a serious effort at prolonged attack, the Germans began their retreat, which only ended with their collapse and the fall of the empire.