advice in South American disputes. When the second French
Republic had been proclaimed in 1848, one of the French ministers
in South America saw a golden chance for his country to assume
the leadership of all Latin America, which was at that time
suspicious of the designs of the United States and alarmed by its
rapid expansion at the expense of Mexico. With the power of the
American Government neutralized in 1861, and with the British
Navy immobilized by the necessity of French friendship, which the
"Balance" made just then of paramount interest to Great Britain,
Napoleon III determined to establish in Mexico an empire under
French influence.

It is instructive to notice that General Bernhardi states, in
"Germany and the Next War" which has attracted such wide
attention and which has done so much to convince Americans of the
bad morals of autocracy, that Great Britain lost her great chance
of world dominance by not taking active advantage of this
situation, as did France and Spain. It is indeed difficult to see
what would have been the outcome had Great Britain also played at
that time an aggressive and selfish part. She stayed her hand,
but many British statesmen were keenly interested in the
struggle, from the point of view of British interests. They did
not desire territory, but they foresaw that the permanent
separation of the two parts of the United States would leave the
country shorn of weight in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.
North and South, if separated, would each inevitably seek
European support, and the isolation of the United States and its
claim to priority in American affairs would disappear. The
balance of power would extend itself to the Western Hemisphere
and the assumption of a sphere of influence would vanish with the