114 The National Geographic Magazine 



Such a development may well be re- 

 spected and feared ; and if we would 

 better arm ourselves against industrial 

 encroachments and equip ourselves for 

 a continuance of our present encour- 

 aging commercial expansion with the 

 most effective weapons, we would do 

 well to take the example and lesson of 

 Germany to heart by looking seriously 

 and long to our own industrial schools, 

 good though they are, and improving 

 and developing these in the light of 

 American conditions and of foreign 

 experience. 



In a comparatively short time Ger- 

 many has become one of the great work- 

 shops of the world, and has secured a 

 place in the front rank of manufactur- 

 ing nations with but little assistance 

 from nature and in the face of many 

 difficulties. It is not a rich country ; 

 its natural resources are moderate ; its 

 position is disadvantageous for trading ; 

 it has enjoyed peace for but thirty years ; 

 it has never enjoyed security, and tran- 

 quillity has been purchased at the cost 

 of an immense military burden. In all 

 these matters it presents a striking con- 

 trast to the United States, which has 

 had every conceivable advantage. Then 

 its people are not particularly inventive 

 and have not fashioned for themselves 

 superior weapons in the shape of new 

 mechanical appliances and revolution- 

 izing processes, like the earlier inven- 

 tions of England and the later ones of 

 America. Nor do they possess excep- 

 tional skill in special directions like the 



French. Even in science, wherein 

 their intellectual strength is greatest, 

 they have no general advantage over 

 England and France, for all three coun- 

 tries can show records of equal luster, 

 whether in physical or biological science; 

 and yet Germany has advanced from 

 comparatively small beginnings so rap- 

 idly that she now does what no other 

 country, though possessing superior ad- 

 vantages or fewer difficulties, can do ; 

 she successfully challenges England in 

 nearly all the great branches of indus- 

 try in which England is or was the 

 strongest. Other countries challenge 

 in this or that or they have special lines 

 of their own ; Germany is an all-round 

 competitor, and the most formidable we 

 have ; and not we only ; she competes 

 with other countries in the products in 

 which they are strongest — with the 

 United States in electrical machinery 

 and small machine tools, with France in 

 dress materials, as she does with Eng- 

 land in shipbuilding and large ma- 

 chinery. To complete the tale, I must 

 add that while doing this and maintain- 

 ing the most powerful military system 

 in the world Germany has at the same 

 time modernized, regulated, and im- 

 proved the conditions of civil life more 

 completely than any other country. She 

 has done all those things in the way of 

 sanitation, public health, street archi- 

 tecture, and public order that other ris- 

 ing industrial countries, and conspicu- 

 ously the United States, have been too 

 busy to do. 



PHILIP NOLAN AND THE "LEVANT" 



THE curious paper which Dr 

 Hague has printed in the Na- 

 tional Geographic Maga- 

 zine for December closes with a refer- 

 ence to a story which I wrote in the 

 year 1863 called " The Man Without a 

 Country. ' ' That story begins with these 

 words : 



' ' I suppose that very few casual 

 readers of the New York Herald of 

 August 13 observed, in an obscure 

 corner among the 'deaths,' the an- 

 nouncement, ' Nolan. Died on board 

 the United States corvette Levant, lati- 

 tude 2 0 11' S., longitude 131 0 W.' " 



I had full right to say that very few 



