ADVANTAGES OVER INTERNATIONAL POLICE FORCE
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.