Jasper County Democrat, Volume 13, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 June 1910 — TRADE A PEACEMAKER. [ARTICLE]

TRADE A PEACEMAKER.

When Nations Lear o to Become Each Other’s Customers They Will Coaae to Be Enemies. We have recently had the annual flood of inconsequential talk about International peace Roosevelt at Christiania pleaded for some check, on the growth of armaments by means of a’ league of nations which would act aa the world's police. ' His speech, however, like that of most orations made at peace gatherings, dwelt rather upon methods of checking wars than of promoting the growth of peace. It is too often overlooked that there is one great natural force always making for the world’s peace if we will only Jet. it grow. That force is international commerce. It is a force powerful enough to knit the world together at no very distant date if left unchecked. According to a recent letter of Andrew Carnegie, the leading nations of the world now exchange goods to the extent of $28,000,000,000 a year. To that extent they are interdependent To that extent they recognize that their interests are not at variance. If the high tariffs were taken down and the trade held hack by them permitted to flow in unrestricted channels this process of interdependence and world knitting would be intensified. The resulting consciousness of identity of interest would cut the ground from under the war spirit and cause it to fade into oblivion. Wars will cease when the peoples of the earth have become intelligent enough to know that the worst use they can make of foreigners is to conquer them or try to injure them. A far mor-e sensible use is to make customers out of them. It is better to be surrounded with nations able and willing to trade with you than with miserable hordes of backward savages too impoverished tg aspire Jo any foreign trade whatever. The foreigner who makes an honest exchange with ns is not our enemy. Our true enemy ig often our own countryman who fears that the Competition of the foreigner would hurt his monopoly and incites us to rise against the foreigner*in order to preserve it. International wars have no justification. Class wars may have.—Thomas Scanlon.