a considerable and in some cases to a very large extent by a very small number of producing countries. Before the war, most of us perhaps were alive to the advantages of an export trade, but it must be counted as one of the lessons of the war that our economic life and the export trade itself are dependent, much more than had been realized, on our import trade.

The economic factors responsible for the war and the economic interdependence of the nations of the world, upon which the war has thrown new light, point the way toward the conditions of an enduring peace. In the first place, each nation must have access to raw materials and markets for its products in order to insure industrial development along the lines for which it is best suited. Secondly, there must be no preferential tariffs. Before the war Russia was dependent upon Germany to a very considerable degree as a market not only for rye and wheat but for mineral products as well; and German influence had permeated Russian trade and industry. Now if Great Britain establishes a tariff on foodstuffs and raw materials and gives a preference to colonial goods in return for colonial tariff preferences to British manufactures, Russia will be forced again to sell her wheat to Germany. It is absolutely necessary, therefore, that England's markets, especially for foodstuffs, be opened to Russia and that British and American capital be invested in Russian industries. The United States also will expect freer entrance for its products into certain foreign markets. Discrimination against American goods, as now practised by France and Canada, cannot safely continue.

Commercial treaties are not sufficient to prevent disagreements. In some cases they even create difficulties for third parties, if not for those directly concerned; and their shortcomings emphasize the need of broader international agreements on many subjects that now cause disputes among nations. There is opportunity for this country to adopt a vigorous policy on international agreements with regard to the parcel post, patents and trade-marks, commercial statistics, commercial travelers, customs and sanitary regulations, and many similar matters, which could be satisfactorily handled by this method.

There might also be uniform shipping rules. At present the rebates given by certain steamship companies furnish one of the standing causes of disputes in the shipping world; but no one nation will force its steamship companies to eliminate rebates as long as

steamship companies of other nations are free to offer them. Such difficulties might, however, be adjusted by an international agreement similar to the Brussels Sugar Convention. International control might likewise settle the long-continued controversies over points of strategic commercial importance, such as the Dardanelles and the railroad across Afghanistan or through Bagdad.

One of the strongest weapons of the proposed League to Enforce Peace would be its control of a certain number of raw materials, through the fact that members of the league produce the greater part of the world's supply. If, for example, a league among the nations thus had control of certain of the essential raw materials to which I have directed your attention and could, in the event of war, sufficiently curtail the shipment to any country of those essential raw materials, it would be a question of only a few weeks or a few months before the nation opposing the league would be forced into peace.

I have attempted rather to meet the subject with suggestions than to cover it in any comprehensive or detailed way. Broadly speaking, the subject reduces itself to one consideration. The present war is largely an economic struggle. The disputes of the future, whether or not they eventuate in war, will have their origin, to a large degree, in international trade problems. We must bend all our efforts, therefore, to reducing the points of conflict in trade and commerce, if we are to hope for an enduring peace.

INTERNATIONAL FREEDOM OF THE PRESS ESSENTIAL TO A DURABLE PEACE

BY DAVID LAWRENCE,

Washington correspondent of The New York Evening Post.

I write this from a war capital-only lately a city of peace. For two and a half years we have been a neutral nation. Suddenly we have become a belligerent. In that transition from a state of neutrality to a state of belligerency lies the key to the problem of a durable peace. I do not wish to be misunderstood in anything I may say here today as conveying disappointment that the United States has entered the war against Germany for no man can be disappointed with that which is right, painful or distasteful as that may be. But I am disappointed that the United States somehow lacked

the moral or expressive power to convey to Germany the rightness of our contention and that Germany seemed utterly incapable of understanding the right and accepting it, painful or distasteful as that might have become.

No better demonstration, indeed, of the problem that must be solved before there can be durable peace in the world has been given in modern history than is contained in the sequence of circumstances under which the United States, three thousand miles distant from Germany, has just become involved in a state of war. The joint failure of Germany and the United States to remain at peace after correspondence of nearly three years emphasizes the futility of diplomacy and unofficial instrumentalities to preserve peace when > there is no free interchange of public opinions between nations.

Could the heart of America have been poured out to the. people of Germany, could the utter unwillingness of the United States to enter the European War have been demonstrated conclusively to the German people, could the passionate desire of the American people to sacrifice their lives and fortunes for the vindication of the rights of humanity and the laws of nation have been convincingly carried home to the people of Germany, and moreover could the German people have spoken their will through a representative body, who is there who will say that the United States and Germany would nevertheless have been at war today? The German people are not so unlike our own people as to be deaf to the voice of reason. They either are unenlightened and uninformed as to the profound impression which inhumane methods of warfare have had on neutral peoples, or they are involuntarily silent, indeed impotent still to utter a protest or effect a change in their government.

What does America today pray for? What is it that will be hailed as the first sign of peace and the restoration of reason in Germany? A revolution, the overthrow of the imperial government that has decreed submarine warfare, that has deported Belgians, that has justified the destruction of the Lusitania-the murder of noncombatant women and children on land and sea. Would the German people in possession of democratic institutions have sanctioned these atrocities? Americans do not think so. And, therefore, the universal hope is for a revolution that will release a spirit of democracy that is in potential existence wherever intelligent and civilized peoples live. But how can such a revolution be effected, how can democracy assert itself without available processes

for the crystallization of public opinion? There are no such processes as yet in Germany. Autocratic government is still powerful enough to prevent free speech, free assemblage and the election of a legislature by the free will of the people.

It is the constitutional freedom of the press that has made of America a democracy in fact as well as in name. It is the freedom of the press that permits the formation of public opinion. German newspapers have been timidly subservient to the autocratic interests of the imperial government. They have often been secretly subsidized by the German government. They have been even in time of peace directly controlled by the government.

The most essential problem in the making of a durable peace is the dissolution of any partnership that may exist in any country between the government and the press. There can be no government by the consent of the governed unless the people have a means to make known their wishes. In America they not only have chosen representatives in Congress to speak for them but enough uncontrolled newspapers throughout the length and breadth of the land through which the people can speak uninterruptedly to Congress when once assembled.

Last, but not least, is the question of editorial and news intercourse between nations. The spoken words of physical contact are of course most effective in preventing or solving international misunderstandings but the interchange of public opinions through the press is often the only way that distances can be overcome. News and editorial opinion passing from nation to nation must not be treated as contraband by an intervening state at any time. Otherwise there is an opportunity for the interposition of the national point of view of states through which cables and telegraph lines must pass enroute to a nation most vitally interested in understanding the viewpoint of another with which it is in controversy or dispute. Interference with the free intercourse of nations through the press either by financial seduction of news agencies engaged in international news distribution or by the exercise of arbitrary powers over the press of any people that desires to be free must necessarily impede international harmony. It must defeat the development of that international mind, as distinguished from a national or provincial attitude, which is so essential to the success of any league to enforce peace or concert of self-governing nations. There must be international freedom of the press.

SOVEREIGNTY AND RACE AS AFFECTED BY A

LEAGUE OF NATIONS

BY THEODORE MARBURG,

Formerly United States Minister to Belgium.

Just as the old idea of natural rights has given way to the conception that the state has a right to do whatever it is in the interest of society in the long result that it should do, so it is becoming plain that the doctrine of absolute sovereignty set up to guard the state itself against interference by other states must ultimately give way before the conception of a society of nations. As is well known, the theory of natural rights, which set boundaries to the activities of the state operating on its own people, was designed to protect men against the power of the autocrat. When governments came to reflect the will of the people the need for this device disappeared. The doctrine of absolute sovereignty had its origin in a similar motive. The theory was designed to safeguard the right of the individual state in a world where the powerful state was governed by few rules or precepts and was moved principally by the desire for aggrandizement. As democracy spreads, the dominating motive of aggrandizement is diminished and the desire to do justice to the sister state begins to emerge. When this happens the same ultimate test may be applied to the doctrine of sovereignty as was applied to the doctrine of natural rights.

If it is in the interests of men that nations should enjoy sovereignty full and unimpaired, well and good. If, on the contrary, sovereignty unimpaired leads to disaster-in the shape, for example, of unjust and destructive wars-it should not be suffered to continue. The state should retain only so much sovereignty as makes for the welfare of men organized in states.

The experience of the forty-eight states now comprising the United States of America is really an application of this conception. The Union was constituted of sovereign and independent states. They surrendered sovereignty but not self-government. The separate states of the Union still govern themselves with respect