Such wonders has the industrial revolution wrought
in a few swift decades, and so great has been the shrinkage of the
planet, that the industrial nations have long since felt the
imperative demand for foreign markets. The favoured portions of the
earth are occupied. From their seats in the temperate zones the
militant commercial nations proceed to the exploitation of the
tropics, and for the possession of these they rush to war hot-footed.
Like wolves at the end of a gorge, they wrangle over the fragments.
There are no more planets, no more fragments, and they are yet
hungry. There are no longer Cimmerians and Ethiopians, in wide-
stretching lands, awaiting them. On either hand they confront the
naked poles, and they recoil from unnavigable space to an intenser
struggle among themselves. And all the while the planet shrinks
beneath their grasp.
Of this struggle one thing may be safely predicated; a commercial
power must be a sea power. Upon the control of the sea depends the
control of trade.
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