Is it true that this war is the outcome of commercial jealousy? Let us look at this for a moment. The two greatest shipping companies in the world before the war were the Hamburg-American Company and the Nord-Deutscher Lloyd of Bremen. These companies had grown strong because they deserved to grow. They had attended to their affairs both in shipment of freight and transportation of passengers with that minute attention to details which is so large an element in German success. The growth of these companies arose through American trade and especially through trade with Great Britain and the British possessions. Did they clamor for war—a war, whatever else might result, sure to cripple their trade for a generation. It is said that Ballin, of the Hamburg Company, unable to prevent Great Britain from rising to the defense of Belgium "went home broken-hearted." Did Ballin build the great Imperator, costing nine million—six million of it borrowed money—with a view of laying her off after a few trips for an indefinite period in Hamburg? Did the Nord-Deutscher Lloyd contemplate leaving the Vaterland and the George Washington to lie in Hoboken till they were sold for harbor dues?
Nor was the jealousy on the other side. The growth of German commerce concerned mainly Great Britain. Presumably it was profitable on both sides, for all trade is barter. In any event, Great Britain has never raised a tariff wall against it, never protected her traders by a single differential duty. She has risen above the idea that by tariff exactions the foreigners can be made to pay the sages. As for envy of German commerce, who ever heard of an Englishman who envied anybody anything?
Again, did the Cunard Company build her three great steamships, the Mauretania, the Lusitania, the Aquitania for the fate which has come to them? In 1914 I saw the great Aquitania, finest of all floating palaces, tied by the nose to the wharf at Liverpool, the most sheepish-looking steamship I ever saw anywhere. Out of her had been taken $1,250,000 worth of plate glass and plush velvet, elevators and lounging rooms, the requirements of the tender rich in their six days upon the sea. The whole ship was painted black, filled with coal—to be sent out to help the warships at sea. And for this humble service I am told she proved unfitted.
No, commercial envy is not a reason, rivalry in business is not a reason, need of expansion is not a reason. These are excuses only, not causes of war. There is no money in war. There is no chance of highway robbery in the byways of history which can repay anything tangible of the expense of the expedition. The gray old strategists do not care for this. It is fair to them to say they are not sordid. They care no more for the financial exhaustion of a nation than for the slaughter of its young men. "An old soldier like me," said Napoleon, "does not care a tinker's damn for the death of a million men." Neither does he care for the collapse of a million industrial corporations.
Of the many forms of business and financial relation among men, none is more important than those included under the name of insurance. Insurance is a form of mutual help. By its influence the effects of calamity are spread so widely that they cease to be felt as calamity. The fact of death can not be set aside, but through insurance it need not appear as economic disaster, only as personal loss. Its essential nature is that of social cooperation and it furnishes some of the most effective of bonds which knit society together. As insurance has become already an international function, its influence should be felt continuously on the side of peace. That it is so felt is the justification of our meeting together to-day, as underwriters of insurance and as workers for peace. The essence of insurance, as Professor Royce observes, is that
'it is a principle at once peace-making in its general tendency and business-like in its practicable special application…. As a result of insurance, men gradually find themselves involved in a social network of complicated but beneficent relations of which individuals are usually very imperfectly aware but by means of which modern society has been profoundly transformed.'
For life insurance, in general, is not personally selfish in its motive. It is essentially altruistic, the effort of the benefit of some person beloved who is designated as the beneficiary. For the benefit of this surviving person, the efforts involved in the payment of premiums are put forth, and the insurance companies and their underwriters constitute the machinery by which this unification is given to society.
To all the interests of insurance, the lawlessness of war is wholly adverse and destructive. Insurance involves mutual trust and trust thrives under security of person and property. Insurance demands steadiness of purpose and continuity of law. In war, all laws are silent. War is the brutish, blind, denial of law, only admissible when all other honorable alternatives have been withdrawn—the last resort of "murdered, mangled liberty."
In its direct relation, war destroys those who to the underwriter represent the "best risks," the men most valuable to themselves and thus most valuable to the community. Those whom war leaves behind, to slip along the lines of least resistance into the city slums, are the people insurance rarely reaches. War confuses administration of insurance. Policies, in war time, can be written only on a sliding scale. This greatly increases the premium by reducing the final payments. Increase of rate of premium must decrease business. War means financial anarchy, inflated currency and depreciation of bonds. A currency which fluctuates demoralizes all business and war leaves no alternative. The slogan "business as usual" in war time deceives nobody. If it did, nobody would gain by the deception. Enforced loans from the reserve fund of insurance companies to the state mean the depreciation of reserves. The substitution of unstable government bonds means robbery of the bond holders. The yielding to the state, by enforced "voluntary action," of reserves of savings banks and insurance companies represents a form of state robbery. This is now in practice on the continent of Europe. Such funds are probably never actually confiscated but held in abeyance until the close of the war. This is another form of the everpresent "military necessity," which seizes men's property with little more compunction than it shows in seizing men's bodies. War conditions mean insecurity of investment. In war, all bonds are liable to become "scraps of paper," and no fund can be made safe. The insurance investments in Europe have been enormously depleted in worth, a reduction in market value estimated at 50 per cent.
Experts in insurance tell me that in war time certain policies are written so as to be scaled down automatically when the holder goes under the colors. Some are invalid in time of war, and some have the clause of free travel greatly abridged. A few are written to apply to all conditions, but on these the rates of premiums would naturally increase. Companies generally refuse to pay under conditions not nominated in the bond, and in general all policies are automatically reduced to level of war policies when war begins.