Needless to say, the European war will not involve the United States in actual hostilities. It is highly improbable that either our army or our navy will see service. We are too distant from the seat of war; too entirely devoid of interests the combatants might seriously injure which a resort to war could remedy; too completely incapable of aiding or abetting one or the other in arms to cause them to assail us. Even were we not as a nation of a peaceable disposition, even had we not a President blessed with a singularly clear head and able to keep his temper, we should still stand little chance of going to war. One eventuality alone might affect us--Japan might attempt some measures of aggression in the Far East which would interest us as possessors of the Philippines, but that is practically foreclosed by her official announcement that she will side with England. The effects of the war upon the United States will be indirect effects; they will be economic in character, though far-reaching and significant for every man, woman, and child in the country. The economic structure of the United States rests today upon the assumption of the interdependence of international trade, upon an international division of labor, where England makes some things, Germany others, and we still more, all of which are exchanged. In a sense each country manufactures and produces for the whole world, and in turn expects the rest of the world to buy its products and to manufacture and produce things for its consumption. While something of this sort has always been true in international trade, the process reached during the nineteenth century an unprecedented development which actually made countries interdependent, or, if you will, actually dependent for the necessities of life upon each other's prosperity and continued activity. Hand in hand went the expansion of the international credit structure, based upon public confidence in the mutual honesty of merchants, until finally personal checks have begun to be exchanged (between the United States and England at least) at par and without investigation or previous indorsement by the banks on which they were drawn.