One of the great advantages of economic pressure is that it can be
applied from within, rather than from without. You will recall that
Mr. Marburg, in his very interesting address yesterday, spoke of the
question that has arisen in many minds as to whether military force
should be put behind a World Court. As you know there has been a standing
proposal for an international police force. Colonel Roosevelt has often
urged the necessity for such a force with his wonted vigor. But after
all isn’t this proposal, stripped, likely to turn out to be merely
militarism masquerading under another name? The fighting armies abroad
are composites from different countries, an actual and destructive
international police force in operation right now. No gentle euphemism
can disguise the grim front of Mars. Unless an international police
force is subjected to the most drastic control and used under the most
compelling limitations it is in danger of provoking the very war it is
organized to avoid. War breeds war, as all history shows. The epigram
of David Starr Jordan in a speech at the Economic Club in New York
a few weeks ago, envisaged a fact, for it is true, as he said, that
“when every one is loaded, some one is going to explode.” I will admit
that an international police force may serve some good purpose as an
international sheriff to aid in carrying forward the due and orderly
processes of a World Court. But when it comes to enforcing the decrees of
such a Court, I would set over against an international police force,
as being incomparably more powerful and of incomparably greater ease in
use, the compelling and world-wide force of commerce. Economic pressure
touches the war chest of every country. Instead of fighting with bullets
let us fight with the money and credit that must be behind bullets. And
the world can fight in that way to protect the civilization that has
been slowly and painfully built up through the centuries if it will
use the force of commerce that stands ready to its hand. This force of
commerce can be applied from within. Nations can declare an economic
embargo against an offending nation. Or it is more accurate to say the
offending nation raises an economic embargo itself by its own act in
breaking its pledge to other nations and placing itself outside the pale
of civilization by becoming an outlaw.