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 fallen. Traders are at last beginning to learn the lesson, even if politicians are not, that a system which is adequate when you have the field to yourself is entirely inadequate when you are face to face with rivals; that, in a word, the methods of monopoly are not the methods of competition.

To this end the study of German methods and German policy is perhaps more likely to prove immediately fruitful than the study of American methods, although of the two nations America is by far the more formidable rival in Imperial trade. It is impossible to withhold our admiration from Germany for the thoroughness with which she has prepared herself for her industrial career. She has neglected nothing to insure success. At home she trains physically, intellectually, and morally her whole working population. She provides, indeed, for them an education which excites the admiration and almost the dismay of foreign observers. She protects her manufacturers in their own markets so that they may be able to submit to sacrifice in foreign markets. She subsidizes lines of steamers to carry German exports cheaply and directly, and authorizes her State railways to make special, and often nominal, rates of freight for oversea trade. Her whole public policy is deliberately directed towards the encouragement and extension of foreign trade.

Another danger that lies in wait for Imperial trade is the continuous extension of direct shipping services between foreign countries and the Colonies and India. The growth of trade between Germany and Australia, South Africa, East Africa, and the Indies is largely due to the regular services which have been established between German and colonial ports, supported as they are partly by direct bounties and still more by indirect bounties skilfully engineered through the State railways. One has only to see the rapid increase of foreign tonnage entered and cleared from colonial ports to realize what a vigorous assault is being made upon England's position as distributor of colonial produce to the rest of the