secure the necessary exchange of information and will coordinate the policy and action of the four Governments-France, Italy, the United States, and Great Britain in adjusting their program of imports to the carrying capacity of the available allied tonnage (having regard to naval and military requirements) and in making the most advantageous allocation and disposition of such tonnage in accordance with the urgency of war needs.

"The council will have at its service a permanent organization, consisting of four sections (French, Italian, American and British), the head of the British section being secretary to the council. The council will obtain through its permanent staff the programs of the import requirements for each of the main classes of essential imports, and full statements regarding the tonnage available to the respective Governments. It will examine the import programs in relation to the carrying power of the available tonnage to ascertain the extent of any deficit, and will consider the means whereby such a deficit may be met, whether by a reduction of the import programs, by the acquisition, if practicable, of further tonnage for importing work, or by the more economical and cooperative use of tonnage already available.

"The members of the council will report to their Governments with a view to securing that the decisions and action required to give effect to any recommendations made by the council are taken in their respective countries."

The policy of the council governs the Allies, but is technically only advisory to America. The Shipping Board's Division of Planning and Statistics furnishes

it information and its policies are deferred to by the Board's controlling agencies, but are not coercive. When, in June, 1918, the Allies finally agreed to form program committees to coordinate supplies and requirements, the reports of these committees to go to the Allied Maritime Transport Council, which is thus definitely informed as to the extent and character of its task, an embryo international commerce commission was in fact established. That the organization is not completer is due to the fact that the United States is not an ally, but only a co-belligerent. The American Section of the Transport Council has an independent existence. It maintains constant communication with Washington and its policies are guided from there.

There are thus, in shipping, two international organizations, the American-British Shipping Control Committee and the Allied Maritime Transport Council. Their functions in some degree overlap, and might conceivably conflict. The duality derives, first, from the somewhat detached position of the United States in the war against Germany and secondly, from the maritime commercial situation in force when we entered the war. We had after generations attained a position of mercantile maritime advantage. We had attained it through the circumstance of war, at the expense of England and of Germany. That both these countries, particularly the former, will seek and will be able to weight a redress of the balance of trade after the peace is natural and to be expected. What is the American attitude and position to be? Assume that it is to be the normal thing - the thing the ordinary "business man" and "banker" is habituated to. We shall then seek to hold the commercial

and maritime advantage we have gained, regardless. We shall quarrel over shipping at the peace table. We shall gain the immediate enmity of England, and consequently of France, for whose rentiers and investors and politicians business is business, and does not get mixed up either with gratitude or sentiment any more than the roast does with hors d'œuvre. Then, to defend our advantage, if we succeed in keeping it, we shall have to endanger and perhaps even refuse or render impotent the much-desired League of Nations. We shall have to create an enormous navy, to establish a universal military service and a standing army. This would undoubtedly be dictated by our national honor and would gladden the hearts of Mr. Roosevelt and Senator Lodge.

The alternative program would be completely to abolish our aloofness. To demand the maximum of integration and expansion of the Allied Maritime Council. To demand the representation of every ship-owning country in the world in the council. To convert into an International Shipping Commission which shall function for the world as the Shipping Board and the British Shipping Ministry function for their respective countries. If we do this, we may have to divide some of the spoils, but we shall keep more than we share, and we shall save the cost of a terrible military establishment and retain the friendship and cooperation of our co-belligerents. The commercial and maritime situation clearly indicates an International Commission on Shipping as an integral part of the International Commerce Commission. It indicates in a word, the League of Nations, among the members of which differential freight-rates and other forms of dis

crimination in restraint of international trade will be felonies.

DIAGRAM OF THE MOVEMENT OF RAW MATERIALS, FOODS, FUEL, ETC., UNDER CONTROL OF THE INTERNATIONAL COMMERCE COMMISSION.

Government Boards & Private Firms of Constituent States
and Others.

Sub-
Commission

on

Meats

Explanation of Diagram. According to the proposal for the constitution of the International Commerce Commission, the war-practice of nations in buying up or otherwise regulating the distribution of raw material is to be continued. All surplus, (1), usually exported in a haphazard way, is to be put under the control of (2), the appropriate subcommissions and committees of the International Commerce Commission. This sits as a whole, (3), passing on the requests, (r), of the various governments and business organizations of the world, (5), for these goods and authorizing their distribution by notice of license to the subcommissions on Communications, (4). The other functions of the commission, such, e.g., as developing resources and finding substitutes, are not indicated.

The Commission on International Communications

The Commission on International Communications has its foundation in the already existing International Postals and Telegraph Unions. Its business would be to coordinate these unions, to make them completer and to increase their efficacy in the execution of their functions and to cooperate with the other subcommissions of the International Commerce Commission in the execution of theirs.

THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCE COMMISSION

Behind the operations of the powers in Asia, Africa, and the Balkans, there exists a financial unity not expressed in political organization. We hear occasionally of the "money trust" and "invisible government.' Since the beginning of the war we have heard of meetings of international financiers - German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, French, and English frightened by the democratic tendencies set free by the war, and eager to find a settlement that will preserve intact their privileges. We have been made familiar with the attribution of sinister motives to Lord Lansdowne's plea for peace, and we have the statement of some of the most humane and liberal men in England that his motives are sinister. But there is very little real public knowledge of the connection between the old feudal land-owning aristocracy he represents and the banking powers whose interests in conflict have developed into the war, now designed by democracy to destroy the power of those interests to make war.

The connection is on the whole very simple. Prior to the industrial revolution the wealth of the richest