It should administer the sea law of the world, and control and
standardise freights in the common interests of mankind. Without these
provisions it would be merely preventing the use of certain weapons; it
would be doing nothing to prevent countries strangling or suffocating
each other by commercial warfare. It would not abolish war.
Now upon this issue people do not seem to me to be yet thinking very
clearly. It is the exception to find anyone among the peace talkers who
really grasps how inseparably the necessity for free access for everyone
to natural products, to coal and tropical products, e.g. free shipping
at non-discriminating tariffs, and the recognition by a Tribunal of the
principle of common welfare in trade matters, is bound up with the ideal
of a permanent world peace. But any peace that does not provide for
these things will be merely laying down of the sword in order to take up
the cudgel. And a "peace" that did not rehabilitate industrial Belgium,
Poland, and the north of France would call imperatively for the
imposition upon the Allies of a system of tariffs in the interests of
these countries, and for a bitter economic "war after the war" against
Germany. That restoration is, of course, an implicit condition to any
attempt to set up an economic peace in the world.
These things being arranged for the future, it would be further
necessary to set up an International Boundary Commission, subject to
certain defining conditions agreed upon by the belligerents, to re-draw
the map of Europe, Asia, and Africa.
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