But are we not concerned? I asked myself as the old steamer throbbed wheezily westward. Beneath the deck in the ship's strong room there were thick bundles of American bonds, millions of them, part of the big American mortgage that Europe has been obliged to sell back to us. They represent European savings, hopes of tranquil old age, girls' _dots_, boys' education and start in life. The American mortgage is being lifted rapidly. The stocks and bonds were going home to pay for the heavy cargoes of foodstuffs and ammunition and clothes which we had been shipping to Europe. The savings of the thrifty French were going to us, who were too rich already. The French were bleeding their thrift into our bulging pockets, selling their investments for shells and guns and barbed wire which would not keep old age warm, marry their girls, or start their boys in life. They were doing it freely, proudly, for the salvation of their _patrie_, which they love as the supreme part of themselves. And to us what did all this sacrifice mean? Oh, that we were growing richer day by day while the war lasted; "dollar exchange" was coming nearer; we were fast getting "rotten with money," as a genial young coal merchant who had the deck chair next mine remarked affably. Yes, the war meant that to us surely,--we were fast raking in most of the gold that Europe has been forced to throw on the table of international finance, the savings, the _dots_, the stakes of her next generation. The number of lean-faced American business men, war brokers, on the steamer was plain evidence of that. Already Prosperity was flooding into America--that prosperity upon which our President congratulated the country in his Thanksgiving address. But is that prosperity a good thing for the American people just now? Aside from the speculation excited by the superabundance of gold in our banks, there is the envy of hungry Europe to be reckoned with a few months or years hence, after the close of the great war, an envy that might readily be translated into predatory action under certain circumstances, as some thoughtful Americans are beginning to perceive. Eastern America, where the war money has largely settled, is already fearful, desires to arm the nation to protect its prosperity. And there is the more subtle, the more profound danger that this undigested war bloat of ours will dull the American vision still further to the real issue at stake--the kind of world we are willing, the kind of soul we wish, to possess. Can we safely digest the prosperity that the happy accident of our temporary isolation and the prudent policies of our Government have given us? Are we not feeding a cancer that will take another war to cut from our vitals? * * * * *