Business and World Peace

Abstract

T HE penetration of great business far beyond national boundaries, with mass production and mass distribution breaking down barriers between nations, has made the subject of world peace, as intimately related to business interests, a large and vital question to all men of vision. It cannot be successfully disputed that war, as exhibited in the late world conflagration and as modern appliances show that it must be in the future, is so great a menace alike to large and small business interests that common sense demands the most serious thought and the most energetic action to create the best possible insurance of the permanence of peace. The fact vouched for by our Secretary of the Treasury, who is certainly not an alarmist, that eighty per cent of the taxes we pay are to meet obligations imposed by wars of the past and preparedness for defense against possible wars of the future, is most arresting. When to that we add the immeasurable material losses that follow the trail of war, to say nothing of the spiritual loss, and realize that business must pay an enormous percentage of the total, we cannot fail to agree that there is nothing more important to business than insurance against the return of the catastrophe. We will therefore waste no time over that part of the question. It is pertinent to ask, Is it possible to obtain reliable insurance against war? By what means may it be obtained? I take the practical answer to these questions to be the true scientific treatment of the subject. Worth while science is not to be found in learned and vague abstractions, but, in this case at least, in the practical answer to the question, Can it be done?--and then to the other question, What are the ways to do it? To say that civilization is powerless to defend itself against its worst enemy is to confess a weakness and a cowardice that is foreign to this age of achievement in which nothing is too great to attempt.