518 THE WORK OF THE STOCK EXCHANGE
companies in freight charges on our foreign trade. The insurance
 of these goods was carried mainly by foreign insurance
 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. Moreover,
 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 exported—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 merchant
 marine on the seas, the vast insurance business centering
 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 balancing
 her accounts with the world. The flood of dividends
and bond interest which returned to London each year proclaimed
 her the world’s greatest creditor nation.

Epoch-Making Character of the Great War.—The World
War wrought vast and profound changes throughout the economic
 structure of the whole world, and particularly in international
 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.