Segak. — The Struggle for Foreign Trade. 525 



That the opening of the Panama Canal will result in the 

 diversion of the routes of a considerable portion of the world's 

 trade, and will bring some portions of the earth into much closer 

 commercial relations, goes without saying. But it will not 

 have the same proportional effect on the world's trade as a 

 whole as did the opening of the Suez Canal, which greatly- 

 shortened all the voyages between the East, including Australia, 

 and the West, including the east coast of North America. The 

 Panama Canal will not shorten the distance between Europe 

 and Australia or the East generally. It will not even make the 

 voyage from New York to China shorter than is that from 

 England bv the Suez Canal, and it will make it only slightly 

 shorter than the voyage from New York itself via Suez. The 

 Suez Canal must continue almost to monopolize the trade of 

 Europe with Asia. Australasia will not be benefited to any 

 extent beyond the shortening of the distance to the eastern ports 

 of the United States. This, no doubt, will tend to encourage 

 trade with the United States ; but as regards trade with Europe, 

 Australia will not be appreciably better off than she is now 

 with the Suez Canal. The Panama route will only shorten the 

 distance from Auckland in New Zealand to Plymouth or London 

 bv something less than thirteen hundred miles as compared 

 with the route round Cape Horn — i.e., by about 10 per cent. 

 This is only about three or four days' sail for the modern ship. 

 As against this advantage, there will be the slow and expensive 

 progress through the canal and its locks, and the disadvantage 

 of there being no great ports of call on the new route. The 

 present route round Cape Horn enables boats to call at the great 

 and rapidly growing ports of the eastern coast of South America, 

 including Buenos Ayres, with its population of over a million. 



On the other hand, the United States will get a much shorter 

 way of water-communication between its east and west coasts. 

 There will also be shorter communication between Europe and 

 the west coasts of the Americas. But the commercial import- 

 ance of the west coast will never be comparable with that of the 

 east coast : its mountainous formation, and the arid character 

 of so much of the country beyond, is very different from the 

 rich plains and great river systems of the east coast. As regards, 

 then, the commerce of Europe in general, or of England in par- 

 ticular, it is a mistake to think that the opening of the Panama 

 Canal mil be in any way of the nature of a revolutionary event. 



Looking now at phenomena rather than at causes or 

 influences, we may remark that in the struggle for foreign trade 

 no feature has attracted more attention than the rapidly 

 increasing foreign trade of Germany. It has been made a 

 persistent argument for a revolution in British fiscal policy. 



