We aim in this country to boycott foreign manufactures with the declaration that we should give all the advantages to labor in this country, and keep our money at home.  But what do we think when we find that Germany has for years run a boycott against every American enterprise?

America’s great International Harvester Company, which has made and promoted the great agricultural inventions of the world; the Singer Sewing-Machine Company, that spreads its manufactures over the earth, and brings back the returns to the United States; all American motor-car companies, all American tobacco interests, and, in fact, all foreign companies, are boycotted, or barred, or worked against, throughout Germany.  Placards in shop windows say, “Don’t buy foreign goods.  Keep the money in Germany!”

The horrors of backing such a policy by a war machine, that would impose German goods upon other countries and keep the products of those countries out of Germany, is something to contemplate; but the deepest lesson from it is in America, which has the tariffs and not even a defensive war machine.

With the Monroe Doctrine so interpreted that no European government can enforce security for its citizens or for the property of its citizens in Mexico, and with a protective tariff under which we can invite countries to send us goods for a series of years and then suddenly bar them out, the United States may be dwelling in a fool’s paradise from the political, military, and economic points of view.

A united Europe cannot be expected to lay down its arms, while arms are international arbiters, until there is a better understanding of the Monroe Doctrine and European relations to Mexico.

There is only one safety for America, and that is the rule of right and of reason.  Tariffs should be neighborly; life and property made secure wherever the United States extends its sphere of influence; and arbitration should take the place of all wars.

Indeed, the United States, from every standpoint, is the one nation in the world to be the promoter of peace, and to assist in its enforcement.  There is no other policy for us from the standpoint of both national righteousness and national safety.

But this subject is so large that I must present it in the next and concluding chapter.

CHAPTER XVII

WHAT PEACE SHOULD MEAN

Not When but How—­The Argument for War—­Right over Might—­National Hate as a Political Asset—­The Human Pathway—­Peace by International Police—­The Practical Way—­Is a New Age Approaching?

The endeavor in these pages has been to show from close personal research in Europe the cause and cost of this war—­cost in finance and human lives,—­and also the lessons that America, and particularly the United States, should derive from this greatest war.

It is not so material when this war terminates, as how it terminates.  Many people, and especially those sympathetic with Germany, are looking for a drawn battle.  This means a world-disaster, and no world-progress.