tion against, importations from Germany or Austria. A considerably longer step is suggested by the statement that, in the period of economic reconstruction, and in order to protect their commerce and industries "against an economic depression resulting from 'dumping,' or against any other unfair method of competition,' a period should be fixed by the Allies "during which the commerce of the enemy powers shall be subjected either to prohibition or to a special system which shall be efficacious." Even this proposal, however, is restricted to the period of transition from abnormal war conditions to the normal state of peace; the next looks to the longer future. Among what are designated as "permanent measures of mutual aid and collaboration," it is stated that the present Allied governments "may have recourse to subsidized enterprises under the direction or control of the governments," or to "payment to encourage scientific and technical researches," or even to "permanent prohibitions." Finally, as to future relations of the Allied Powers with one another, the conference declared itself united "in preserving for the Allied countries, in preference to all others, their natural resources during the period of commercial, industrial, agricultural, and maritime reconstruction," and agreed for that purpose "to establish special arrangements which will facilitate an exchange of resources." An Investor's Experience your Recently an architect came to one of our offices and made a large purchase of bonds for an estate of which he was executor. "I know that House investigates rigidly and purchases only safe bonds for your offerings to the public,“ said he. "You may remember that several years ago I was interested in the erection of the... Building. We wanted to issue bonds, and offered the loan to you. You refused it, after investigation, on the ground that the loan was too large to be safe-which I must admit was true. Although your refusal interfered with my plans at that time, it proved to me that you maintain high standards of safety. That is why I come to you now when I want to invest instead of borrow. CAREFUL investigation is the first duty of the responsible and reputable investment House, and is, after all, the chiefest safeguard of the investor. Every issue of bonds offered by us has been thoroughly investigated in all its details, and purchased with our own funds, before being offered to the investing public. This is only one of the many reasons for the record of this House -34 years without loss to any investor. We now offer, for the investment of your funds, thoroughly safeguarded first mortgage serial real estate bonds, secured by high grade, new buildings and land in New York, Chicago, and other large cities, yielding 52%. Write today for Circular (Continued from page 47) and English parliaments. By some European critics it has been assumed that the programme was urged primarily by the Continental AlliesRussia and Italy in particular-who wished to be guaranteed against falling again under Germany's financial and commercial domination. But there have also been intimations that the programme formulates the British ministerial assertion of last December that "so far as commerce is concerned, Germany is a beaten nation, and it is for us to see that she does not recover." Against this second theory, the Paris proposals have been defended as the erecting of a necessary safeguard against the commercial chaos pictured as a result of Germany's desperate economic situation after the war. States? FROM yet another point of view, it has been alleged that England's proposed participation in this sweeping protective policy embodies a clever move by Bonar Law and his English "Tariff Reformers" to fastIs it Disen on England, in the stress crimination of war, a tariff system which against the English voters had stead- United fastly rejected in time of peace. Even at Washington, the Paris declaration has elicited the pointed inquiry whether or not the pledge of the Allies to preserve by mutual arrangement the resources of their countries "in preference to all others" pointed to discrimination against the United States. Thus confused are even financial Europe's assumptions as to purpose. All that can as yet be said with assurance is that the whole procedure reflects, not reasoned conviction based on experience, but the vague apprehension arising from uncertainty as to what will actually be the world's economic or political situation when war is over-which has colored even our people's judgment as to their own country's situation on return of peace. When experienced men refuse to risk prediction of the probable economic sequel to this war no one need wonder at panicky demands to prepare for anything. The compact to resist the imagined inroads of commercial Germany, on return of peace in Europe, is at least as logical as the political demonstration for an American army large enough to resist her imagined military inroads. The two suppositions are indeed not at all dissimilar; for whereas the one would seem to look for military aggression on an unprecedented scale from a nation with a shattered army and a depleted population, the other apparently assumes an equally unprecedented commercial competition from a country stripped of raw material, denuded of surplus capital, drained of its able-bodied laborers, and saddled with a depreciated currency. No doubt, such results as these are N° conceivable possibilities. Needs of Powers after the War But how far are they probabilities? Germany herself appears more doubtful of her power to cut this formidable figure than are her adversaries. It the Central was one of the highest practical experts of industrial Germany who predicted, only a few months ago, that a year and a half would be required by Germany and Austria, after peace, "merely to re-supply their own countries with the things that have been used up during the war." If, as seems economically probable, wages in the countries now at war will be kept up by the shortage of labor and the unexampled pressure of taxation, and if, as one may reasonably assume, industrial Germany will suffer from those handicaps at least as severely as any other nation, and certainly more than England, then it must be admitted that there is another side to the argument. History gives two striking instances of heavily increased export trade from a state emerging from a devastating war; the case of England after 1815, and the case of France after 1871. But England after Waterloo was the only country in the world equipped to meet (Continued from page 49) the urgent and immediate need for manufactured goods on the part of its exhausted neighbors, and the England of that day had not only suffered no formidable loss of men at the battlefront, but had installed the newly invented steam-power while the war was going on. Not only had the waste of men and material by France in the war with Prussia been insignificant when compared with that of every belligerent in this war, but the thousand-million-dollar indemnity which she had to pay within two years made the sale of her own products to her more prosperous neighbors an immediate and absolute economic necessity. LL these considerations will in due ALL of Paris? course get a hearing, when the declaration of the Paris conference comes up for debate before the legislative bodies. That discussion is bound to bring forward three conWill siderations, which apparentLegislatures Back up the ly received scant consideraDeclaration tion from the delegates at Paris. In so far as the proposed agreements are defensive, not offensive, they would amount to confessing fear of the very nation which (supposing the defeat of Germany) had just been conquered. That attitude would at least be novel and anomalous for a victorious Coalition. In so far as they are offensive and not defensive, they would be public declaration of economic war, to be made a source of future bitterness, acrimony, and renewed political intrigues, at the very moment when the disastrous military war had been happily concluded. But in the third place, the legislators will be apt to remind the delegates of the fact that, while what England, France, Italy, and Russia would gain from the exclusion of German trade would be highly problematical, what they would lose would be certain. Back of all questions of "dumping," "commercial invasion," and "balance of trade" stands the quite undeniable fact that Germany, with her thrifty population and her enormous import requirements, is one of the most profitable markets of the world. It will hardly be supposed that exclusion, partial or complete, of German products from the Allied markets, would not provoke retaliation in kind on the part of Germany. F so, then the upshot of such attempts to obstruct by arbitrary edict the normal movement of commercial intercourse would necessarily be to transfer such opportunities, in How the United States the rich field of Germany's import trade, to exporters from neutral markets which, Would Reap like the United States, are. from Both Sides already threatening Great Britain's commercial supremacy. Not only so; but a decision of the Allied markets to dispense with German goods would quite as inevitably compel their own recourse to the American producers on a scale of exceptional magnitude. Even if, under such conditions, English and German exporters should endeavor to find in the American market compensation for their loss of Anglo-German trade, the salient fact would be the further immense advance in commercial prestige by the United States-at the expense of the European markets, yet by the deliberate act of the European powers. It is not easy to imagine England, at any rate, embarking on so suicidal a commercial policy. When all the surrounding circumstances are considered, it is surely more reasonable to suppose that the English delegates, at any rate, endorsed the Paris proposals as in the nature of a threat to Germany of what may happen if her government does not presently come to terms and end. the war. This was clearly the purpose of the recent very bungling application of the "Trading with the Enemy Act," by England to merchants doing business in the United States. The threat of drastic measures even after peace may similarly |