England and France in 1914 for the control of the Haitian customs is a recent incident which indicates rather clearly that the danger of impairment of the fundamental feature of the American foreign policy with reference to the weaker states of Latin America has by no means passed.

In sharp contrast to the conditions found in Africa and Asia, then, America has been kept free from the extension of political control by the powerful extracontinental powers. The struggles of the commercial diplomacy of European powers in the New World have not been accompanied by extension of territorial possessions. They have been confined to competition for economic advantage in countries under American flags. The only shifting of political control which has occurred in our day has resulted in the displacement of a European power from American territory already held, in the creation of new independent states, or in the shifting of control of American territory among American states.

TRADE COMPETITION AND INTERNATIONAL INTERESTS

But this condition does not indicate that foreign chancelleries allow American affairs to play an unimportant part in their activities. Political possession of a country without control of its internal economic development and of its foreign commerce may be an illusory advantage, and preponderance in these particulars may not be inconsistent with the nominal political independence of a region. Realizing this fact, commercial

and financial interests of the great European nations have engaged in a contest for the control of American development and trade, and foreign courts have not been slow in backing up the interests of their nationals. In this contest for commercial advantage the American states have also entered.

Indeed, with the increasing appropriation of exploitation areas elsewhere by the great world powers and the tendency to create tariff barriers for the advantage of the home country, the competition for the American market has become keen and will become keener. Strong governments in the New World will reap decided advantages from this development. It will bring them into touch with world markets; it will stimulate their peoples to greater production and a higher standard of life. Foreign capital will seek their borders to the advantage of both the investor and the resident population.

But, under the same influences, the weaker governments may find the functions which they are called upon to assume more onerous and insistent than ever before, and perhaps beyond their power of performance. From Texas to Brazil and Chile extends a group of states and colonies some of which are in all but perpetual disorder. Some of these lack capital for the development of their natural resources, and good transportation facilities to bring them into touch with the world markets. Some will be valuable chiefly because of the favorable location as bases from which trade may be controlled. Others languish because of an inefficient labor supply, and still others, through lack of natural wealth, seem des

tined never to occupy an important or prosperous position.

In all of these communities the commercial diplomacy of our time will have a growing interest, an interest greatly enhanced by the fact that through the Caribbean, the traffic center of the American tropics, will pass the trade routes developed by the Panama Canal. Both the competition for the control of the trade which lies within their borders, and the fact that before their ports passes the commerce of distant countries will give to Caribbean communities an importance in international affairs they have not had since the days when the Spanish empire in America was at its height and the people of one of the great world powers depended for its prosperity on the arrival of the gold ships from its American colonies. The fortunes of the Caribbean are no matter of merely local interest. They involve, to a degree still unappreciated, the world at large and especially the American continents, both North and South. Upon the solution of the problems which arise there may depend the character of international political and economic development in America. The importance of the new position in which the Caribbean region stands is brought home by almost every general phase of American international affairs.

Caribbean problems, even if the countries lying in the region did not themselves have possibilities of economic importance, would be of great and increasing significance, especially for the maritime nations. The Balkans and Asia Minor have an importance far beyond their intrinsic wealth because they lie on the trade

routes between the East and West. In a similar way, the Caribbean in the New World furnishes a path for the commerce of the Orient and the Occident. In addition, through it will go all of the commerce from Europe to the northern tier of South American states and part, at least, of that from Europe to the west coasts of both Americas. The cutting of the Isthmus, too, will make these waters of increased importance in the trade between the eastern and western portions of the American continents. No other region will have its position in the transit trade of the world more radically changed in our generation.

But the fact that the Caribbean will be the crossroads of the western world does not measure its importance. The Panama Canal is, of course, the commanding feature in the minds of all who think of this part of the world. The interests which are bound up in that waterway affect all others, but there are other phases of Caribbean development which deserve attention not only on account of this secondary relation to the canal, but because of their own intrinsic importance.

Little appreciated among these factors which are locally important is the volume of international trade originating in and finding its destination in Caribbean regions. Compared to the great foreign commerce of Germany or the United Kingdom, the trade of the Caribbean region is small. It contributes to none of the great commercial nations a share of its commerce which reflects the number of its peoples or the extent of its territories. In spite of the fact that its exports are almost exclusively of raw materials, or, at best, only

partly manufactured products, and in spite of the fact that its imports are the materials first sought in undeveloped countries or those necessities demanded by a population of a low standard of life, still the commercial importance of these countries is increasing both relatively and absolutely. The new developments do not affect the world market except in a few articles, but a comparison of international exchange as it now exists with conditions a decade ago, given in the following table, shows an increase decidedly encouraging and full of significance.

RECENT GROWTH OF INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN THE CHIEF COUNTRIES OF THE CARIBBEAN REGION

Compiled from Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1904, Department of Commerce and Labor, Washington, 1905, and Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1914, Department of Commerce, Washington, 1915

1 Included in Colombia in 1903.

? The dates are not uniform for all the countries cited

Every republic in the list is rapidly increasing its trade. In the more important units the foreign commerce has been growing on the average at the rate of over one hundred per cent. a decade. Such a development merits the attention of all interested in the expansion of the world's foreign exchanges.