Business to-day is really the great organized life of the world. The
agencies through which it is carried forward have created such a maze of
interrelations that each nation must depend on all the others. A great
Chicago banker, John J. Arnold, Vice-President of the First National Bank
of that city, said to me this week that so closely drawn and interwoven
had become the economic net in which the world was immeshed that if
the great war could have been postponed four or five years it would
never have swept down upon men like a thunderbolt of destruction. As
an additional strand of great strength in the warp and woof of modern
progress, Mr. Arnold believes that an International Clearing House will
come—in fact that it is an inevitable development in international
finance. It was my privilege to hear him make a notable address before
the last meeting of the American Investment Bankers’ Association in
Philadelphia in which he proposed such a Clearing House for settling
balances between nations, just as our modern Clearing Houses now settle
balances between Banks in cities in which they are located. Beyond
question such an International Clearing House, when established, would
quickly become an invaluable auxiliary to a World Court, helping to
give it stability and serving, when occasion arose, as a mighty agency
through which economic pressure could be applied.
And I believe Mr. Arnold is right in his view that an International
Clearing House is bound to come. Business, finance and commerce are now
so truly international that there is a manifest need of it. As a strong
proof of this let me remind you that when this war broke, forty per cent.
of the securities of the world were held internationally.