Now if that were done, how could a country so dealt with retaliate?  She could not attack all the world at once.  Upon those neighbors more immediately interested could be thrown the burden of taking such defensive military measures as the circumstances might dictate.  You might have a group of powers probably taking such defensive measures and all the powers of Christendom co-operating economically by this suggested non-intercourse.  It is possible even that the powers as a whole might contribute to a general fund indemnifying individuals in those States particularly hit by the fact of non-intercourse.  I am thinking, for instance, of shipping interests in a port like Amsterdam if the decree of non-intercourse were proclaimed against a power like Germany.

We have little conception of the terror which such a policy might constitute to a nation.  It has never been tried, of course, because even in war complete non-intercourse is not achieved.  At the present time Germany is buying and selling and trading with the outside world, cables from Berlin are being sent almost as freely to New York as cables from London and German merchants are making contracts, maintaining connections of very considerable complexity.  But if this machinery of non-intercourse were organized as it might be, there would be virtually no neutrals, and its effect in our world today would be positively terrifying.

It is true that the American administration did try something resembling a policy of non-intercourse in dealing with Mexico.  But, the thing was a fiction.  While the Department of State talked of non-intercourse the Department of the Treasury was busy clearing ships for Mexico, facilitating the dispatch of mails, &c.  And, of course, Mexico’s communication with Europe remained unimpaired; at the exact moment when the President of the United States was threatening Huerta with all sorts of dire penalties Huerta’s Government was arranging in London for the issue of large loans and the advertisements of these Mexican loans were appearing in The London Times.  So that the one thing that might have moved Huerta’s Government the United States Government was unable to enforce.  In order to enforce it, it needed the co-operation of other countries.

I have spoken of the economic world State—­of all those complex international arrangements concerning Post Offices, shipping, banking, codes, sanctions of law, criminal research, and the rest, on which so much of our civilized life depends.  This world State is unorganized, incoherent.  It has neither a centre nor a capital, nor a meeting place.  The shipowners gather in Paris, the world’s bankers in Madrid or Berne, and what is in effect some vital piece of world regulation is devised in the smoking room of some Brussels hotel.  The world State has not so much as an office or an address, The United States should give it one.  Out of its vast resources it should endow civilization with a Central Bureau of Organization—­a Clearing House of its international activities as it were, with the funds needed for its staff and upkeep.