into food and clothing and housing and all of the things that make up our civilized lives. The problem in the past has been to get those raw materials from the areas of low pressure, which are demanded in the areas of high pressure, and to get them under proper conditions. Around that problem there has been a great deal of what is called "international politics." The struggle for Morocco is an example, and the opening up of Africa was really based upon that desire. As Senator Root was saying last night, the principle of autocracy is one of control. We might say that the principle of democracy is one of administration rather than of control, but in the past there has been a great deal of the principle of autocracy in international politics. We have not been satisfied with getting our rubber from a single concern in Africa or South America; we wanted to control it. That has been natural from the point of view of autocratic international politics. Democratically, there is little reason for caring who owns the district where the thing is produced, providing we can get it. That is a problem which is going to arise in the future. It must be solved, because we are going to demand those products, and I believe that it can be solved, if it is clearly recognized that the problem is one of not who owns the territory, but of what use is made of it. As I see it, one of the reasons for the successful solution of that lies in the fact that the winners of the present war are going to be those countries that are democratically organized, and their interest will not be merely to paint a particular territory their color on the map, but to use it for the benefit of all; for, fundamentally, of course, democracy is the use of everything for the benefit of all.

Professor GEORGE G. WILSON. The matter which Mr. Woolsey was bringing out, the economic aspects of international organization, must necessarily bear a very important relationship to the conduct of the United States in immediately ensuing years. Formerly, we could rely upon our isolation for such a degree of freedom of conduct as we might see fit. At the present time, however, having become the leading exporting nation of the world, and at the period before the war the third importing nation in the world, what we do, and what our attitude in regard to these matters may be, is not a subject of indifference to the rest of the world. We further have the very great good fortune to live in a territory ideally situated, as defined in the paper of Mr. Woolsey, in the temperate zone, extending from one ocean to another, and touching pretty nearly all parts of the world in its range, so that when it is noon here in Washington, it is one o'clock the following morning in Manila, and with such a range, from east to west and north to south, we get products which enable us to supply a

large part of the world, and lead in wheat, silver, coal, and iron, and so forth, the general doctrine being that the country that controls the coal and iron controls a very large factor of the world's work. Therefore, we must begin to regard these things as a basis for an actual constructive program in international relationship. We cannot neglect our economic relationship, as Mr. Woolsey has very well pointed out.

Added to that fact, we have a coast line, if we run into the three-mile limit, of about 45,000 miles that has some of the very best ports of the world. There is something to protect. Therefore, if the navy is the first line of defense, and we propose to protect ourselves, we must be adequately prepared.

Further than that, we have a standard of living which, according to a recent Japanese estimate, would allow about a billion more population in the world before it became uncomfortable. This same Japanese statistician, apparently estimating with impartiality, said that, according to the German standard of living, the world would accommodate about five billion more of population; according to the Japanese standard of living, it would accommodate something like twenty-two billion more. Now, the standards of living determine somewhat the attitude of one people towards another, and if we propose to maintain the American standards of living, on American territory, it is time the United States began to consider by what means these shall be maintained.

The CHAIRMAN.

Is there anyone else who has anything to offer on this important subject?

Professor PHILIP MARSHALL BROWN. I just wanted to say a further word in regard to the remarks of my friend Mr. Gregory. I think I am in substantial accord with him in believing that the economic factor has not been absolutely the determining factor in all of the wars, or most of the wars. I think we are in great danger of laying too much stress on the influence of the economic factor in history and politics and morals, even. If I were going to criticize the book I referred to, by Mr. Weyl, he lays too much stress on the economic factor. And yet we must not ignore the fact that this economic factor looms very large with certain nations, notably Germany. Those of us who have been reading Rohrbach's book, and particularly Friedrich Neumann's book on Middle Europe, must realize that the necessity of self-sufficiency, from the economic point of view, looms very large in the minds at least of the Germans.

Furthermore, I think we ought to be prepared to recognize that you can strangle a country economically, as well as conquer it by force of arms.

Serbia has been in just such a situation. Someone has wittily remarked, referring to the chief export of Serbia, which, you will recall, is pork, that the most effective way for Austria to bring pressure to bear on Serbia was to mobilize its veterinarians, and that has happened. When Austria has wished to put great pressure on Serbia, she has found something the matter with Serbian pigs. Serbia has been bound to try to reach out and attain a certain measure of economic freedom, and you will remember that the nations of Europe in 1912 and 1913, when they felt compelled to deny Serbia the fruits of victory, the possession of a port on the Adriatic, — Durazzo, felt compelled, however, to recognize the right of Serbia to what they called freedom of commercial access to the sea, thereby putting their stamp of approval upon this great basic principle of the necessity of freedom of trade or intercourse, or of regulating it.

Furthermore, if you will consider the situation of Hungary or Poland, I think you will appreciate that it will be very hard to bring about an independence of Hungary or Poland that does not have in it a recognition of their right to a certain amount of freedom of trade with the rest of the world; that any denial of those rights, either in the case of Hungary or Poland or Serbia, must constitute a certain menace to the independence of those nations, and therefore to their peace and the peace of the rest of the world.

Mr. WALTER S. PENFIELD. Mr. Chairman, I had not expected to say anything when I came here this morning, but after hearing the remarks of Mr. Gregory and Mr. Brown, I think I would like to say a few words. I understood Mr. Gregory to say that he felt that wars were not brought about so much by economic rivalry, and he pointed to the fact of freedom of trade in Great Britain. I believe that there is a cause for wars in economic strife, but that it is not in regard to the protection of home trade, which Mr. Gregory would seem to intimate, but rather in regard to the development of foreign trade the friction that exists between two countries which seek to develop business in a certain foreign country.

I am going to give you a concrete illustration, because, as a practicing lawyer, I am not bound to maintain any of my knowledge of our diplomacy, except such as any good American should maintain, for the sake of his government. It is a well known fact that the Germans for a number of years have been trying to develop a large export business to Haiti, and it is a well known fact that the naturalized Syrian-Americans went to Haiti and developed a large American business. We have been exporting down there about five million dollars worth of goods a year, all handled

by the Syrian-Americans, who naturally bought all the goods in this country. At the time when I was first brought into the matter, there were a German, and, I believe, a French bank, in Port-au-Prince. The Syrian not only sold his goods from New York through his commission merchants, to Syrian wholesale establishments in Port-au-Prince, but there the goods were resold to retail Syrian merchants, and, in turn, sold to peddlers, who peddled the island, and came into the competition of the Germans. That led the Haitian Government in 1904 to pass a law excluding the Syrians from Haiti, because, as they said, of the economic effect on their people; and when the United States protested against this exclusion law, the Haitian Minister here, Mr. Leger, a very clever diplomat, pointed out that we had a Chinese exclusion law, and that we excluded Chinese for the same reason, namely, because of the economic effect on our people.

Who can say to what extent the German Government was back of that exclusion law that was passed by the Haitian Government, because, if the German Government could keep the Syrians out of Haiti, it could kill at least five million dollars' worth of business a year from New York to Haiti. It is a well-known fact that the German bankers in Central America and Haiti, in cities especially where there are no American bankers, are perfectly willing to and do show the invoices and drafts of American merchants to the German merchants located in that city, so that the German merchant knows everything that the American merchant is doing, and is enabled to outbid him the next time that there is an opportunity to sell goods.

Now, what is the result of that little commercial friction that may exist between two dry goods companies of two nationalities in a third foreign country? It next affects the banks, and the first thing you know, these banks, perhaps to get railroad or mining concessions for their nationals, begin to promote revolutions and to finance governments. In the case of Haiti it is well known that the German Government was financing revolutions down there, and it is well known that one of the objects of the German Government was to get a naval concession at Mole St. Nicholas, and once they got a naval station there, it would endanger our enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine. If we had not gone in there and made a treaty with Haiti for ten years, whereby we police the island and put them on a sound financial basis, the chances are that Germany would be there to-day, and she would have a naval base, and our Monroe Doctrine would be in danger. If she were there to-day or if she had started to go in there, I firmly believe the United States would have made a strong diplomatic protest, especially if Germany had established a naval base there under a

concession from the Haitian Government, after the breaking out of the war in Europe in 1914. But perhaps Germany would have refused to give up her naval base in the Mole St. Nicholas, and that might possibly have resulted in war between the United States and Germany at that time.

I am speaking merely of possibilities, and especially of the possibility of the breaking out of war between the United States and Germany as the result of the German banker showing the invoices of American merchants to the German merchants. In other words, I do believe that commercial rivalry on a small scale between two foreign countries in a third foreign. country may be the foundation upon which is built the steps that lead gradually to an international war, and anybody who is familiar with the history of some of the countries to the south of us, such as Mr. Brown, I believe will agree that there are possibilities there. Do you, Mr. Brown? Professor BROWN. Yes; I do.

Mr. PENFIELD. There are possibilities, and I am giving you a concrete case which I think may interest you. I thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there any further discussion?

Mr. JAMES BROWN SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, following the good example that you have set in venturing to address the meeting, I should like to make a few remarks upon this subject. It may well be that we give too much consideration to the mere matter of trade, and yet at the same time, we live by trade, and we think, and must necessarily think, and spend a very large portion indeed of our time, in thinking of those things which are to us as life itself, because they maintain life.

It may be true, as Mr. Gregory has stated, that a nation, in declaring war, will not ordinarily allege a desire for the trade markets of the world, or may not enumerate among the causes of war, commercial expansion; but it does not follow from this, that the hope of commercial expansion is not present, and that the desire to improve or increase trade has not been a very controlling motive in the war which has been declared. We know from history that the colonies in America were a source of war; we know that Europe trembled on the brink of a war in the Moroccan dispute, largely a matter of commerce, and we are perhaps justified in believing that, if the nations had not come together and agreed upon the opening up of Africa, the tragedies in America, caused more or less, as I believe, by commercial motives, would have been enacted, on even a larger scale in darkest Africa.

It is not for me, standing here, or, indeed, for any of us at present, to attempt to pierce below the surface and to lay bare the causes of the