The Audacious War Part 13

England can stand upon a gold basis because she commands the gold promises to pay, but in war time she can threaten the stability of the monetary systems of many countries. The United States saved its gold base by closing the Stock Exchange, but the South American countries were quickly in distress for gold.

To put India on a gold basis a few years ago, a tax was levied on Indian silver imports with the result that India has absorbed $400,000,000 in gold from England in the last five or six years, and where payments to India were formerly one-quarter gold and three-quarters silver, they are now one-quarter silver and three-quarters gold.

All these matters are being sharply watched by the English economists.

A fifth lesson we may draw from the war is the necessity for a larger official representation abroad. It was fortunate that before the outbreak of the war the American emba.s.sy in London had been moved to larger quarters by the gardens west of Buckingham Palace.

The strain that was thrown upon that emba.s.sy for information, pa.s.sports, transportation, etc., was something terrific. United States statutes allow this emba.s.sy only three secretaries, but it had to use eight, and the work continued until 3 A.M., and sometimes 5 A.M. There was only one relief in the situation and that was in a study of the queer characters one finds abroad, insisting that they are representative Americans. Some of the people demanding free transportation back to America declared their residence to be in Hoboken, but could not tell if Hoboken were nearer New York City than to San Francisco. It was a great temptation for some people to get out of the war zone and into America at the expense of Uncle Sam. The amount of business transacted by this emba.s.sy may be ill.u.s.trated by the fact that the cable tolls alone for several months cost more than the former total expenses of the emba.s.sy.

Still another lesson from the war that America must learn is that food supplies are now not national, but international. We have seen the price of sugar in the United States jumping up and down in a commercial battle between England and Germany almost before their clash at arms.

Before the war, 80 per cent of the sugar consumed in England was produced in Germany. England, under her free trade policy, had permitted German beet sugar interests, fattened upon a government bounty, to destroy the refinery interests in the south of England. The Island gained by the trade because her refineries were turned into sugar canneries. Jams and marmalades therefrom expanded her foreign trade. Germany, however, at the outbreak of this war, proposed to cut off, or tax heavily, England's sugar supply. Into the markets of the world went the British Treasury and in a few days the government was in command of an eighteen months' supply of sugar for the whole of Great Britain. Down went the price of sugar in Germany, and now the government is taking measures to restore prosperity to her sugar interests by a reduction in beet-sugar plantings. The English government is selling sugar in England at a loss, as a war measure, and will not permit sugar purchases in any country where Germany sells her sugar.

Nothing but the strain of war could have induced the Bank of England to count a hundred million dollars in gold sent from New York into Canada as a part of the Bank's metal reserve.

There is now no reason why this relation should not continue. Why should fifty or a hundred million in gold be sent across the ocean in the spring, to be returned in the fall? The world is going to be still more a unit in finance hereafter. It has taken a generation to educate the world to the right of the individual in the common fund of money, so far as money is needed to effect transfer of credits. This is the keynote in our Federal Reserve act: that business has just as much right to regulation promoting safe and smooth credits as it has to national regulation promoting safe and sound transportation.

Out of this war must arise better international relations, and they comprise not alone the relations of peace, but closer relations to international transportation, as respects both s.h.i.+ps, international money, and international credit.

While many people are looking for financial independence between nations, the United States taking back from Europe in the next three years the larger part of the $6,000,000,000 of American securities owned abroad, it is quite possible that the opposite will take place: a greater interrelation, not only in credits but in investments.

If nations are to be more closely knit together hereafter, it will be not alone in alliances of peace, but in financial alliances in security owners.h.i.+p.

It is far better for both Europe and America that, instead of Europe selling its American securities, America should buy European securities--first, acceptances, making a basis for credits and international purchases in connection with the war; and later, American investment in the funds of foreign nations. It may be that before this war is over many European nations will have to appeal to America with their loans.

If France could see her way clear to put out a long-term loan at 5 per cent instead of short-term loans at this rate, there should be a good investment field for it in America.

Russia is an unconquerable country, and her securities at a good rate should be attractive for some American capital.

There is no reason why the 3 per cent bonds of Germany should not soon be investigated for investment purposes in America. The German debt is very small and, however long the war may continue, German bonds will ultimately be paid. They are quoted now at about 70, and, with the discount on exchange, they may be purchased from America at nearly 60, or to get 5 per cent on the investment, to say nothing of possible appreciation toward par in the future.

One may well believe the Germans to be misled in this war, and yet properly await opportunity to purchase at the right time their outstanding national bonds when these can be purchased so much more advantageously toward the end of the war than in the beginning of the era of peace, which must in time follow. Is it not just as neutral to purchase German bonds from the Germans as to purchase s.h.i.+ps or our own railroad shares from Germany?

A great and primary lesson for the United States is in a thorough understanding that this war was caused by tariffs. The United States is the home of protective tariffs. The sentiment under a protective tariff is national selfishness. England has bought in other markets wherever she could buy cheapest, and has kept her ports open to the cheapest markets. This may be her selfishness.

It may, however, remain for the United States, while maintaining a protective tariff, to look to larger international relations and admit reciprocal trade-relations. There is a wide field for study here in connection with this war, for the same spirit--the wresting of commercial advantages by tariffs without regard to the fellow nation--is in many countries.

We aim in this country to boycott foreign manufactures with the declaration that we should give all the advantages to labor in this country, and keep our money at home. But what do we think when we find that Germany has for years run a boycott against every American enterprise?

America's great International Harvester Company, which has made and promoted the great agricultural inventions of the world; the Singer Sewing-Machine Company, that spreads its manufactures over the earth, and brings back the returns to the United States; all American motor-car companies, all American tobacco interests, and, in fact, all foreign companies, are boycotted, or barred, or worked against, throughout Germany. Placards in shop windows say, "Don't buy foreign goods. Keep the money in Germany!"

The horrors of backing such a policy by a war machine, that would impose German goods upon other countries and keep the products of those countries out of Germany, is something to contemplate; but the deepest lesson from it is in America, which has the tariffs and not even a defensive war machine.

With the Monroe Doctrine so interpreted that no European government can enforce security for its citizens or for the property of its citizens in Mexico, and with a protective tariff under which we can invite countries to send us goods for a series of years and then suddenly bar them out, the United States may be dwelling in a fool's paradise from the political, military, and economic points of view.

A united Europe cannot be expected to lay down its arms, while arms are international arbiters, until there is a better understanding of the Monroe Doctrine and European relations to Mexico.

There is only one safety for America, and that is the rule of right and of reason. Tariffs should be neighborly; life and property made secure wherever the United States extends its sphere of influence; and arbitration should take the place of all wars.

Indeed, the United States, from every standpoint, is the one nation in the world to be the promoter of peace, and to a.s.sist in its enforcement. There is no other policy for us from the standpoint of both national righteousness and national safety.

But this subject is so large that I must present it in the next and concluding chapter.

CHAPTER XVII

WHAT PEACE SHOULD MEAN

Not When but How--The Argument for War--Right over Might--National Hate as a Political a.s.set--The Human Pathway--Peace by International Police--The Practical Way--Is a New Age Approaching?

The endeavor in these pages has been to show from close personal research in Europe the cause and cost of this war--cost in finance and human lives,--and also the lessons that America, and particularly the United States, should derive from this greatest war.

It is not so material when this war terminates, as how it terminates.

Many people, and especially those sympathetic with Germany, are looking for a drawn battle. This means a world-disaster, and no world-progress.

The British Empire is determined that this war shall mean for generations a lasting peace by the destruction of the German war machine. The Germans likewise declare that what they are fighting for is the peace of Europe. The Germans, high and low, declare that this peace has been disrupted by jealousy of German culture, German efficiency, and German success. It is difficult to understand the German logic, for wars do not lessen jealousy, envy, or race, or national hate. They only increase the jealousy and put peace further away than before, unless there is real conquest, division, and absorption.

Bismarck declared in 1867 that he was opposed to any war upon France, and that if the military party convinced him of ability to crush France and occupy Paris, he would be unalterably opposed to the attack. For, said he, one war with France is only the first of at least six, and were we victorious in all six, it would only mean ruin for Germany, and for her neighbor and best customer.

"Do you think a poor, bankrupt, starving, ragged neighbor as desirable as a healthy, solvent, fat, well-clothed one?" demanded Bismarck.

France attacked Germany in 1870 and found her well-prepared armies impregnable. Many believe that the Allies will find the German trench-defences now impregnable. I do not think the Allies will pay the price in human sacrifice to invade Germany from the west. The break-up of Germany is more likely to come from her exhaustion and the weakness of Austria, against which the pressure will be steadily increased. But what follows the war is most important. If the victorious or defeated nations are to go on arming, they will go on warring to the extent that there be left in the world no small nations and no unfortified area.

If Germany is to grow other navies, and England is still to build two for one, North and South America must in time have navies, the support of which will burden the western hemisphere and the progress of humanity. It ought to be clear that this audacious war can mean nothing unless it means tremendous progress toward universal peace; unless it means that nations are to be guided by the same principles, practices, and morality that should guide individuals.

I know all the arguments for the needfulness of war, and there is not one of them that will hold water. Wars exist for the same reason that they formerly existed with individuals, or between cities, or states,--because there was no organization regulating the relations between individuals, cities, and states. Wars exist between nations to-day because there is no organization regulating international relations.

Out of this war and its alliances must ultimately come such a regulating of international relations, or the world goes back toward bankruptcy and barbarism.

It is declared that the people of Europe have wanted this war; that the Germans wanted to expand by war; that the French have wanted to fight for Alsace-Lorraine; that the Russians must war for a water outlet; that the English have favored war for a readjustment of the European balances in power. There are many individuals who want their neighbors' goods, or redivision; there are many cities jealous of their commercial rivals; there are many states jealous of the progress of others; but all these no longer think of war as a method of readjustment, or even of redress of grievances.

Patriotism and nationality should no more be a basis of war than civic pride or family pride.

Perhaps the first error to be blotted out before a universal peace is that which arises from the German teaching that the state is a distinct ent.i.ty or individuality apart from ourselves; that a state has no moral status, no moral principles, and can do no wrong; that while we may not steal individually, we will justify ourselves in stealing, murdering, and plundering collectively, in the name of the state.

When once this error is clearly seen and rooted out, we shall still find in every community men who believe that what a man is able to get and hold is his by right of possession and power; and we shall still have police regulations, departments of justice, and courts of law, to defend the weak against injustice from the strong.

We have const.i.tutions in civilized communities to prevent robbery and the injustice of majorities upon minorities. We have sheriffs, police, and military power to enforce the edict of right, when once the highest tribunal has made the nearest possible human approach to justice.

A distinguished lawyer once said to me that, to him, the most wonderful thing in the world was an edict of the Supreme Court of the United States; "A few words scrawled upon a sc.r.a.p of paper and approved by some aged individuals of no great physical vigor; and, behold, it is instantly the law of a hundred million people!"

And, for the benefit of future human progress, the argument supporting that edict is later printed with it; and that in future any errors therein may be corrected, the wisdom of the minority or dissenting judges is as carefully preserved and bound up with the major opinion and edict, that all public sources for correction of error may be preserved in the clear amber of legal justice in truth as betwixt man and man.

"For what avail the plow or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?"