tective tariff is, in effect, an auxiliary safeguard against overproduction. Incidentally the fact that its imposition does not result in insufferable hardship serves also to show that the new order of industry is highly productive, quite inordinately productive in fact. And it is a divine right of the nation to use its discretion and offset this inordinate efficiency of its common stock of knowledge by adroitly crippling its own commerce and the commerce of its neighbors, for the benefit of those vested interests that are domiciled within the national frontiers. But the divine right of national self-direction also covers much else of the same description, besides the privilege of setting up a tariff in restraint of trade. There are many channels of such discrimination, of divers kinds, but always it will be found that these channels are channels of sabotage and that they serve the advantage of some group of vested interests which do business under the shelter of the national pretensions. There are foreign investments and concessions to be procured and safeguarded for the nation's business men by moral suasion backed with warlike force, and the common man pays the cost; there is discrimination to be exercised and perhaps subsidies and credits to be accorded those of the nation's business men who derive a profit from shipping, for the discomfiture of alien competitors, and the common man pays the cost; there are colonies to be procured and administered at the public expense for the private gain of certain traders, concessionaires and administrative office-holders, and the common man pays the cost. Back of it all is the nation's divine right to carry arms, to support a competitive military and naval establishment, which has ceased, under the new order, to have any other material use than to enforce or defend the businesslike right of particular vested interests to get something for nothing in some particular place and in some particular way, and the common man pays the cost and swells with pride. VII LIVE AND LET LIVE THE Nation's inalienable right of self-direction and self-help is of the same nature and derivation as the like inalienable right of self-help vested in an irresponsible king by the grace of God. In both cases alike it is a divine right, in the sense that it is irresponsible and will not bear scrutiny, being an arbitrary right of self-help at the cost of any whom it may concern. There is the further parallel that in both cases alike the ordinary exercise of these rights confers no material benefit on the underlying community. In practical effect the exercise of such divine rights, whether by a sovereign monarch or by the officials of a sovereign nation, works damage and discomfort to one and another, within the national frontiers or beyond them, with nothing better to show for it than some relatively slight gain in prestige or in wealth for some relatively small group of privileged persons or vested interests. And the gain of those who profit by this means is always got at the cost of the common man at home and abroad. These inalienable rights are an abundant source of grievances to be redressed at the cost of the common man. It has long been a stale commonplace that the quarrels of competitive kings in pursuit of their divine rights have brought nothing but damage and discomfort to the underlying peoples whose mate rial wealth and man power have been made use of for national enterprise of this kind. And it is no less evident, though perhaps less notorious, that the pursuit of national advantages by competitive nations by use of the same material wealth and man power unavoidably brings nothing better than the same net output of damage and discomfort to all the peoples concerned. There is of course the reservation that in the one case the kings and their accomplices and pensioners have come in for some gain in prestige and in perquisites, while in the case of the competitive nations certain vested interests and certain groups of the kept classes stand to gain something in the way of perquisites and free income; but always and in the nature of the case the total gain is less than the cost; and always the gain goes to the kept classes and the cost falls on the common man. So much is notorious, particularly so far as it is a question of material gain and loss. So far as it is an immaterial question of jealousy and prestige, the line of division runs between nations, but as regards material gain and loss it is always a division between the kept classes and the common man; and always the common man has more to lose than the kept classes stand to gain. The war is now concluded, provisionally, and peace is in prospect for the immediate future, also provisionally. As is true between individuals, so also among the nations, peace means the same thing as Live and Let Live, which also means the same thing as a world made safe for democracy. And the rule of Live and Let Live means the discontinu ance of animosity and discrimination between the na- At home in America for the transient time being, the war administration has under pressure of necessity somewhat loosened the strangle-hold of the vested interests on the country's industry; and in so doing it has shocked the safe and sane business men nto a state of indignant trepidation and has at the same time doubled the country's industrial output. But all that has avowedly been only for the transient time being," for the period of the war," as a distasteful concession to demands that would not wait. So that the country now faces a return to the precarious conditions of a provisional peace on the lines of the status quo ante. Already the vested interests are again tightening their hold and are busily къ |