----------+---------------+---------+---------------+---------+---------- As figures are rather confusing and difficult to retain in the memory, let us find a more graphic way of indicating this zone in the Western Pacific where the chief conflict of canal and commerce is likely to take place in the future. Let us mark out a block of sea and land between the lines of latitude 40 deg. north and 40 deg. south and the lines of longitude 120 deg. east and 160 deg. east of Greenwich. This zone includes Japan and Korea, Shanghai and the Philippines, New Guinea, and all Australia except the farthest western coastline. New Zealand lies outside it. Now along its western margin, the Suez and Panama routes to New York are equal in length. Along its eastern margin, which lies outside Japan and Australia (_not_ New Zealand), and only traverses the scattered islets of the Pacific, the Suez and Panama routes to Liverpool are equal in length. Now look down an imaginary line near the centre of the zone but running rather west of north and east of south. Along this line all places are the same distance from New York and Liverpool by Panama and Suez respectively. Can we, then, roughly forecast the changes in ocean trade-routes which will result from this new channel of communication between East and West? For this purpose we may divide the world traffic into three parts--firstly, that part of it which the canal is almost certain to secure; secondly, that for which it will have to fight with competitive routes; thirdly, that which it will have no chance of securing. As regards the first, Panama will almost certainly attract most, if not all, the traffic which flows from the eastern American and Gulf ports to Hawaii and the west coast of North and South America, and of the traffic from the United Kingdom and the west of Europe to the whole western seaboard of America. We have already seen the regions where the Panama Canal will have to compete with the existing routes. Roughly, they comprise Pacific Asia, a part of the East Indies, and Australasia. These regions represent an enormous volume of traffic from which Panama will have to try to detach as large a share as possible. The third part is the main traffic-field of Suez--that is, Southern Asia, East Africa, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf. No efforts on the part of Panama, no reductions of canal tolls, could possibly lure any of this traffic from its determination to Suez; the competitive region of the two canals lies all east of Singapore, and the greater part of the commerce of that region with Western Europe will still continue to move _via_ Suez.