street were thinking. His voice became the Voice of Empire. Up and down
England and before cheering crowds he preached the doctrine of trade war
to the death on Germany. He denounced the laxness that had permitted the
"German taint to run like a cancer through the fair body of English
trade"; he urged complete economic independence of the Dominions. His
persistent plea was, "We must have the fruits of victory"; and those
fruits, he declared, comprised all the trade that Germany had hitherto
enjoyed, and as much more as could be lawfully gained.

He urged that the blood brotherhood of empire, quickened by that
dramatic S.O.S. call for men across the sea and cemented by the common
trench hazard, be followed by a union of empire after the war that
should be self-sufficient. Behind all this eloquent talk of protection
and prohibition lay the first real menace to America's new place as a
world trade power. It was the opening call to arms for the war after the
war.

Hughes did more than set England to thinking in imperial terms. He upset
most of the calculations of the Powers That Be who invited him. They
expected an amiable, able and plastic counsellor; they got an oratorical
live wire, who would not be ruled, and who shocked deep-rooted
free-trade convictions to the core. He helped to launch a whole new era
of thought and action; and the next chapter of its progress was now to
be recorded under circumstances pregnant with meaning for the whole
universe of trade.

The second winter of war had passed, and with it much of the dark night
that enshrouded the Allies' arms. On land and sea rained the first blows
of the great assaults that were to make a summer of content for the
Entente cause. Its arsenals teemed with shells; its men were fit;