GERMANY

This rise to imperial power and decline to national impotence, succeeded again by shifting strength, has been coincident with the rise of a great leader and the succession of a weak one.

"A world united" under Charlemagne, Germany became "the land divided" under his sons; and from that day to this the tide of German power has flowed and ebbed according to whether genius or mediocrity sat upon the German throne.

The Germany of today is a wonderful empire-whatever the Book of Fate may have in store for its tomorrow. Its people are so old in the history of Western civilization that Julius Cresar, when he became governor of Gaul, encountered them to the east of the Rhine, and bore testimony to their fighting spirit and their military prowess: yet its government is so young that men still on the sunny side of fifty can remember when it came into being. The present German Empire was born out of the Franco-Prussian War; what its future shall be is now in process of determination.

The average American has read so much about the might of the German army, the prowess of the German navy, the triumphs of the German factory, and the commercial conquests of the German exporter that he finds it a surprise when he is told that Germany, territorially, is so much smaller than Texas that a slice as big as all New England could be cut out of the Lone Star State and what remained would still be larger than the German Empire.

But if Germany be small in territorial extent, it has been powerful in population, strong in industrial resources, and great in technical achievement. Only Belgium, Netherlands, Japan, and the United Kingdom, among the nations of the earth, have a denser population. Only China, India, Russia, and the United States have a more numerous population. Only Great Britain is a greater buyer in the world's markets, and only the United States and Great Britain are greater sellers in those markets.

How close has been the competition of these three great countries for leadership in the world's export trade is revealed from an examination of the record. The United States led in 1913, with exports valued at 2,428,000,000; Great Britain came second. with $2.371,000,000; Germany took third place, with $2,131,000,000; France, with fourth place, had an export business of only $1,295,000,000.

During the years in question Germany imported nearly one-eighth of all the world had to sell, and exported more than one-ninth of what the world wanted to buy.

Although embracing only one-fifteenth of the area of Europe, Germany, in 1912, produced one-seventh of its wheat, a fifth of its oats, more than a seventh of its barley, more than a fourth of its rye, and over a third of its potatoes. It yields place among the producing nations of Europe only to Russia.

To what a remarkable extent the German farmer has mastered the science of agriculture is shown by a comparison of his per-acre yields with our own. If we had grown as much wheat to the acre in 1913 as the Germans, our crop would have been two and a half billion bushels instead of three-fourths of a billion bushels. If our farmers had grown as much oats to the acre as the Germans, our yield would have been 60 per cent of the…"