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America, Russia, Hemy, and NapoleonBritain and her allies out of Flanders. Th e following winteroFrench hussars would ride triumphantly into Amsterdam onthe ice.The war between Great Britain and France, begun so inauspiciouslyfor the British, was to continue practically unbrokenuntil Napoleon's exile to St. Helena in 1815. For itsfirstfifteenyears, that war was the making of America's fortune. TheUnited States was the only maritime power which wasn'thabitually at war with half or more of the great trading nationsof Europe. British ships were considered worse than plaguecarriers by the governments of France and her allies, andBritain's navy scoured the vessels of France and her allies fromthe face of the oceans. By the process of elimination, a hugeproportion of the carrying trade of the Atlantic community fellinto American hands. The "long haul" from the West Indies toEurope became the special province of the American merchantmarine. In 1792, on the eve of the wars of the French Revolution,our re-exports of sugar and coffee were only 1,176,156and 2,134,742 pounds respectively. In 1807, thesefigures were143,136,905 and 42,122,573 pounds respectively. 4 Americansailors had become panderers to the sugar and coffee habits ofthe whole European continent.All in all, between 1792 and 1807, the value of America's reexportsclimbed from $2,000,000 to nearly $6o,ooo,ooo. 5 Thishad an electric effect on our whole economy. In that fifteenyears the value of American imports leaped 300 per cent andexports 400 per cent. The total tonnage of our shipping rosefrom 564 million to 1,268 million tons, and the percentage oftonnage arriving in U.S. ports which was owned and registeredin America rose from an anemic 63 per cent to a glowingly74