Our principal competitors in the great commerce of the world—Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands—are subject to an average rate of $14 to $15 per capita, mostly imposed to meet the interest on war debts and the cost of militarism. This burden, tending to increase, stands for a rate of from eight to fifteen per cent. on their lesser national product.
On this difference only we save from $700,000,000 to $800,000,000 a year, or, in other words, gain that amount which our principal competitors now waste in destructive preparation for war.
People of some prominence in political and clerical life often expose their shallow capacity or their ignorance, by sneering at 'commercialism' and by trying to discredit those who oppose the brutality of war by speaking of commerce as a mean and selfish pursuit.
Commerce lives and moves and has its being in mutual service rendered by men and nations for mutual benefit. It demands peace, order and industry.
War exists because of the survival of the brute element in man, which has not yet been overcome by education.
As surely as Christianity will displace paganism, as surely as civilization will displace barbarism, as surely as intelligence and education will displace ignorance, so surely will the beneficent force of commerce suppress the barbarity and brutality of war.
