518 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE 
companies in freight charges on our foreign trade. The in- 
surance of these goods was carried mainly by foreign insur- 
ance companies, and this was another American invisible 
import. Our immigrants remitted huge sums each year to 
Europe, and our tourists abroad spent as much again. More- 
over, as we have seen,’ America was steadily importing 
capital by selling her securities abroad, and in addition was 
remitting vast sums annually in interest and dividends on our 
bonds and stocks held abroad. We were in consequence really 
a debtor nation then, and wise old Europe as she received 
dividends from us, and clipped coupons from American bonds, 
could well afford to agree with us when we told her how 
prosperous we were and how much money we were making. 
The International Trade Position of Great Britain.—The 
situation in Great Britain, however, was just the reverse. 
The British regularly imported more goods than they ex- 
ported—a fact which some unsophisticated critics thought 
alarming. But in the invisible trade Britain exported vastly 
more services than she imported. Hers was the greatest mer- 
chant marine on the seas, the vast insurance business center- 
ing at Lloyd’s was internationally famous, and her preeminent 
banking center and stock market in London exported credit 
and capital to the far corners of the earth. So successful was 
Great Britain in her total foreign trade that she was able to 
import many millions in foreign securities each year in balanc- 
ing her accounts with the world. The flood of dividends 
and bond interest which returned to London each year pro- 
claimed her the world’s greatest creditor nation. 
Epoch-Making Character of the Great War.—The World 
War wrought vast and profound changes throughout the eco- 
nomic structure of the whole world, and particularly in inter- 
national trade. Civilization was, in fact, shaken to its depths, 
and while the wreckage and waste caused by the war have 
“11 See Chaoter III, p. 70.