Page:"The next war"; an appeal to common sense (IA thenextwarappeal01irwi).pdf/189

 with less effort, may keep ours stronger than that of all the other powers.

Think, too, of our military potentiality! We may, if we will, summon to the colors more soldiers than France, Germany and Belgium put together. And what soldiers! Beside our stalwart divisions, their comrades on the European battlefields looked scrawny. We have learned war, now; the American army has been brought up to date. We have at this instant more munitions, lying greased and ready in storage, than any other nation on earth. We have more manufacturing power for new munitions than any other two nations. Back of it all, we have the American ingenuity which gave the world so many of its industrial inventions in the nineteenth century. We, of all, will know best how to keep ahead of the new warfare. Did we not invent Lewisite gas? Did we not show how aeroplane engines, hitherto manufactured painfully by hand, could be poured out by machine processes, like Ford cars?

South from our borders to the isthmus runs a succession of undeveloped countries, as rich and nearly as large as our own national domain. They need capital; we are exporting capital faster and faster. Here lies much profit for us all—if we can keep the field exclusive. Our diplomacy, if backed by the unprecedented military power we have at command, can keep it exclusive. Then, some day when we hold a tight financial grip on Mexico, Guatemala