Resolved, by this World Court Congress that the next Hague Conference be urged in the interest of peace, to provide as a penalty for the infraction of its conventions or for a refusal to submit all justiciable issues to arbitration, that an embargo shall be declared against the offending nations by the other signatory nations, as follows:
1—Forbidding an offending nation from buying or selling within their territory or territory under their control.
2—Forbidding an offending nation from raising money through the sale of bonds, or of any other forms of debt, within their territory or territory under their control. Be it further
Resolved that the President and officers of this World Court Congress be instructed to take all possible and proper means to secure the adoption by the next Hague Conference of this proposal to apply the economic pressure of commerce as the most efficient, humane and civilized means of insuring the world’s peace by making the proposed World Court effective.
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.
THE QUESTION OF PROFIT OR LOSS
Or course, the one apparently strong and valid argument to be brought against economic pressure is that it would bring great loss to the commerce of the nations applying it. But that loss would be far less than the loss brought by war. And there would be no loss whatever if war were avoided. Still to the automobile factories in these great Lake Cities, working over time on war contracts, to the farmer enchanted with the magic of “dollar wheat” and to those especially affected by mounting export balances an economic pressure that resulted in smaller trade may seem an astonishing measure to adopt. But ask the cotton growers who had their market cut from under them by war; consider the virtual moratorium in this country when the exchanges closed, bringing an incalculable loss in shrinkage in security values and affecting all business; consider the industrial survey made in New York and other cities during the past winter showing that unemployment had increased threefold; listen to the poignant human appeal from our Charity Organizations; at least one must grant that the shield of Mars has two sides. And it has always had two sides. But the burnished side is not that which reflects the ghastly image of war.
WHAT A TRIAL BALANCE OF COMMERCE SHOWS
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.