rials by the export of manufactured commodities there comes a time when the accumulation of industrial and commercial profits is such that a more lucrative use of the surplus can be made abroad in the less developed countries than at home with the lower rates usually found in an older industrial system. In other words, the emphasis is now transferred from the export of goods to the export of capital." The conclusion of Professor Seligman's argument is significant: "To say, then, that either Great Britain or Germany is responsible for the war seems to involve a curiously shortsighted view of the situation. Both countries, nay, all the countries of the world, are subject to the sweep of these mighty forces over which they have but slight control, and by which they are one and all pushed on with an inevitable fatality.'

President Wilson has been emphatic in his statement that the Berlin-to-Bagdad Railway "was constructed in order to run the threat of force down the flank of the industrial undertakings of half-a-dozen other countries." (Buffalo, November 12, 1917.)

The Department of Commerce in a bulletin on "German Trade and the War," (No. 65, 1918) shows conclusively that it was Germany's desire for markets and investment opportunities that brought on the World War.

The Navy League goes farther. As a representative of many of the Big Business activities of the United States it printed in heavy-faced type on page 32 of "Sea Power" (September, 1916),

"The Navy League believes:

"That most modern wars arise largely from commercial rivalries;

"That we are now seizing the world's trade;

"That following the present war will come the most drastic commercial readjustment and the most dangerous rivalries ever known; and, that, consequently, it is our duty to guard ourselves against these dangers while there is yet time."

This formula is generally accepted in the business world. The masters of American industry are now preparing for the next great war.

The League Covenant dodges the economic issue. There is no section in the entire document which even faces, much less attempts to solve, the problem of markets, trade and investments.

Professor Edwin M. Borchard, Professor of International Law, Yale University, writes (LaFollette's, April, 1919, p. 65): "True, more machinery is created; but it seems calculated merely to prevent the operation of inevitable effects resulting from causes to which very little thought appears to have been given. Tariff barriers, trade and investment preferences and monopolies, racial discriminations, the nationalistic control of important trade routes and of backward areas with their raw materials, military and naval rivalry or attempted monopoly, a more intense economic competition than ever before, all these are given full sway; but we are asked to place our trust in a document by which the now dominant nations expect to prevent the inevitable results of these causes, to save themselves from the consequences of their own acts and weakness.'

A widely known English economist, Professor J. A. Hobson, goes still farther: In a pamphlet on "The New Holy Alliance," he says, regarding the proposed plan for the League, "The net result is, not a League of peoples devoted to peace and fruitful international co-operation, but a conspiracy of autocrats designed to hold down its enemies by superior economic and military-naval force, and to exercise a domination over the whole world; a tyranny only qualified by the necessity of preserving the solidarity of the great Powers by means of a sufficient share of the spoils of victory.'

Most of the conferees in Paris did not understand economic questions. Most of them were international politicians. Political machinery was their chief coneern. They failed to grasp the significance of the

economic forces by which they were surrounded. The League Covenant in its present form, with a few changes in wording, might have been written in 1815, so completely does it overlook the problems which financial imperialism has hurled into the arena of modern economic life.

Competition is war. Competition is becoming more intense. War thus grows more inevitable.

The economic struggle in the modern world points in one direction, and in one direction only-toward a stupendous military conflict between the present victors. The capitalist world is rushing to another great catastrophe.

One thing and one thing only will prevent the next war-that is the elimination of capitalism. President Wilson made this point after his return from his first visit to the Peace Conference. At New York, (March 4, 1919) he said: "The people see that their Governments have never been able to defend them against intrigue and aggression and that there is no force of foresight or of prudence in any modern Cabinet to stop war." The week previous, speaking in Boston (February 24, 1919), the President said, "The peoples are in the saddle, and they are going to see to it that if present governments do not do their will, some other government shall, and the secret is out and the present governments know it.”

The peoples of Europe at last are awake to the fact that war will not be prevented by a League of Capitalist Empires. Many of them see farther. They realize that war is an inevitable attribute of capitalism, which relies for its philosophy upon the savage precept "Let him take who has the power and let him keep who can."

VII

WILL THE LEAGUE BENEFIT LABOR?

Will the League of Nations benefit labor? The workers; the nine-tenths; the plain people, who fight

wars, suffer poverty and sweat under oppressionwill the League of Nations answer their cry for help?

The plain people want peace, bread, enlightenment, liberty. These things and these alone are benefits. The League of Nations will provide none of them.

The five states which dominate the League of Nations are capitalist empires in each of which the industries are run for the private profit of a favored few.

Capitalism cannot bring peace because it is based upon the principles of war. The League of Nations is a League of Capitalist Governments; not a League of Free Peoples. Capitalist governments in the past have waged war to safeguard dividends, and when the time is ripe, they will do it again.

Bread, under capitalism, goes, not to those who make it, but to those who can pay for it-the property owners. The worker, with his pittance wage, cannot buy back what he produces. The propertyowner, with his ample income of rents, interest and dividends lives upon the fat of the land. Capitalism to-day is built on the same barbaric system of exploitation that has existed in England since the middle of the eighteenth century, and that exists today in Japan, Italy, France and the United States. That system will give the worker neither a fair share of bread nor any of the other opportunities of life. The system has been tried out for generations, and to his sorrow the worker knows it for what he gets.

Even when, for brief periods of prosperity, the workers build up organizations and secure better conditions of life, hard times spell periodic disaster. When the inevitable readjustment is made from war prices to peace prices there will be five, six or, perhaps, even seven millions of men and women on the streets looking for work. What will "war prosperity" amount to then? Of what avail will be their trade and industrial unions? An organization without the ownership of the job at such times amounts to nothing. Capitalism cannot give the workers mas

tery over their own jobs; if it did it would cease to be capitalism.

Will the League of Nations spread enlightenment through the world? Look over the capitalist countries, and ask whether enlightenment is being spread by individual nations. Are the masters enlightening the workers of Japan? Are they spreading knowledge in France? The Japanese labor agitators are in jail. The French socialist papers still come to the United States with great blotches of "censor" marks on them. Are the masters spreading enlightenment in the United States? They have blanketed every organized avenue of education with ignorance, and individuals who try to illuminate this darkness with the light of truth get from five to twenty years for their pains. The capitalist nations united are not going to spread enlightenment any more than capitalist nations individually. The League of Nations will do no more to enlighten the world than Britain has done to enlighten Egypt. The capitalist nations, united, will practice exploitation, oppression and tyranny just as they have done it individually, with this one difference "In union there is strength."

Will the League of Nations give the people liberty? Are "the masters of the government of the United States' who are "the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States' going to extend to the other portions of the earth the liberty of Everett, Ludlow, Bisbee and Lawrence? The liberty of Bill Haywood, Tom Mooney, Kate O'Hare and Eugene V. Debs? Will Britain give more liberty to the world than she has given to Ireland and India? Will Japan spread Korean liberty among the nations?

Labor needs peace, bread, enlightenment and liberty. None of these things will come through the League of Nations, therefore, the League of Nations will not benefit labor.

Furthermore, there is a fundamental principle here involved. Those who have read American history remember the slogan "taxation without representa