If a balance could be rightly struck in this country is there any one
who believes that our interests would be best served by war in some
other country? This is quite apart from any question of humanity or
civilization. Let it be a trial balance of commerce alone and it will
show a heavy debit against war. And an accounting will show the same
result in all other countries. If this be true, with only current
commerce entering into the equation, how staggeringly true it becomes
when the piled up debts caused by war are considered. Economists who
have examined the matter state that this war has already cost over forty
billions of dollars. And the end is not yet.
So why shouldn’t business, which has been binding the world more closely
together for centuries, be employed to protect the world against the
waste and loss of war? Hague Conferences have sought earnestly for
penalties that would save their Conventions from being treated as mere
“bits of paper.” Penalties that every nation would be bound to respect
could be enforced through economic pressure. The loss in trade would be
small or great in proportion to the amount and duration of the pressure;
but it would be at most only an infinitesimal fraction of the loss caused
by war.