The War After the War | Page 5

of World Trade Rights there is scant mention of neutrals--no reference at all to the greatest of non-belligerent nations. Yet the document is packed with interest, fraught even with highest concern, for us. Upon the ability to be translated into offensive and defensive reality will depend a large part of our future international commercial relations.
Is the Paris Pact practical? Will it withstand the logical pressure of business demand and supply when the war is ended? How will it affect American trade?
To try to get the answer I talked with many men in England and France who were intimately concerned. Some had sat in the conference; others had helped to shape its approach; still others were dedicated to its far-spreading purpose. I found an astonishing conflict of opinion. Even those who had attended this most momentous of all economic conferences were sceptical about complete results. Yet no one questioned the intent to smash enemy trade. Will our interests be pinched at the same time?
Regardless of what any European statesman may say to the contrary, one deduction of supreme significance to us arises out of the whole proposition. Summed up, it is this:
Mutual preference by or for the members of either of the great European alliances automatically creates a discrimination against those outside! Whether we face the Teuton or the Allies' group--or both--in the grand economic line-up, we shall have to fight for commercial privileges that once knew no ban.
There are two well-defined beliefs about the practical working out of the pact as a pact. Let us take the objections first. They find expression in a strong body of opinion that the whole procedure is both unhuman and uneconomic--a campaign document, as it were, conceived in the heat and passion of a great war, projected for political effect in cementing the allied lines. In short, it is what business men would call a glorified and stimulated "selling talk," framed to sell good will between the nations that now propose to carry war to shop and mill and mine.
"But," as a celebrated British economist said to me in London, "while all this talk of Economic Alliance sounds well and is serving its purpose, the fact must not be overlooked that, though war ends, business keeps right on. Self-interest will dictate the policy that pays the best." This is a typical comment.
Now we get to the meat of the matter: By the terms of the pact half a dozen important nations--to say nothing of the smaller fry--are bound to a hard-and-fast trade agreement. Business, in brief, is projected in terms of nations.
Go behind this new battle front and you will find that it conflicts with an uncompromising commercial rule. Why? Simply because, so far as business is concerned, nations may propose, but human beings dispose. Individuals, not countries, do business! Being human, these individuals are apt to follow the line of least resistance. Hence, the best-laid plans for imposing international industrial teamwork are likely to founder on those weaknesses of human nature that begin and end in the pocketbook.
After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and while the Peace of Versailles was being negotiated, commercial travellers of each nation, laden with samples, filled the border villages, ready to dash across the frontier and open accounts. Of course no one dreams that such history will repeat itself after the present war; but there are many persons in England and France to-day who contend that the business needs of peace will be stronger than the costly hang-over of wartime passions.
Trade, after all, is a Colossus that rests with one foot upon Necessity and the other foot upon Convenience.
Will the Allies be such valued commercial helpmates to each other? Perhaps not. When this war is over the fighting countries will be impoverished by years of drain and waste. As a result, they will be poorer customers for each other, but very sharp competitors. International trade is merely an exchange of goods for goods. You cannot sell without buying, and vice versa. No groups of nations can live by taking in each other's washing. They are bound to get outside linen. When peace comes we shall have the lending and purchasing power of the world. Can anybody afford to shut us out?
Again: Can the Allies present a united front or carry on a uniform line of conduct? Will not their interests overlap and cause an inevitable conflict, even when intentions are of the very best?
France, for example, competes with England in chemicals, surgical instruments, high-speed tools, scores of things; Russia's competitors in wheat are not Germany, but Canada, India and Australia; Italy and France are rivals for the same wine markets. Russia for years has kept down the high cost of her living by buying cheap German goods at her front door and having her projects financed by German