vice of national debt. When savage 'tribes, or Greece and Rome, or a nation in the Middle Ages, went to war, all they could pay was the money they had or took from their enemies. But to-day a war means generally a nation fighting for its life—and a nation, as well as individuals, will not only spend everything it has but will exhaust all its credit to pay for war. Therefore, as a nation becomes more wealthy, as financial conditions become more stabilized, as borrowing becomes more limitless, we may expect the cost of wars for these reasons to increase:

1. Because the great bulk of a population believe that not they, but the few rich, pay the national debt and are willing that the nation should spend any amount of money that it can borrow. It is easy to spend other people's money.

2. Because a nation, like an individual, will spend more lavishly when borrowing from the future, particularly when the payment is indefinite and may fall upon a future generation.

3. Because the total funds that may be spent consist not only of current revenues and assets but, in addition, the limit of a nation's credit.

Ability, to borrow, therefore, makes possible far larger expenditure, and constitutes one reason why the wars of a few hundred years ago were necessarily limited to amounts that now seem trivial, even in comparison to the then smaller population and

wealth.

In David Starr Jordan's book, "War and Waste," published in

1913, to demonstrate the impossibility of war, this pacifist argues the impossibility of a general European was because it would involve, according to Rickets' estimate, “21,200,000 men," and as much as "$50,000,000 a day." Yet these figures fell hopelessly far short of actual experience. Over 50,000,000 men were involved in the war, and England and America alone spent more than $50,000,000 daily without counting the expense of other Allies and the ene

mies.

Is it not pertinent to inquire whither the world is going if settlement by the increasingly expensive method of war is to continue, with its increasing devastation, cost of war, cost of armaments after the war, and increasing interest and cumulating debt?

Is it any wonder that it is said to take in Europe to-day one month's wages of the laboring man yearly to pay for war, and one to two weeks more for war debts? And if this condition continues and grows, are we not likely to be as was England in 1842, when one-third to one-half the income of the people was paid for taxes alone?

When the world's debt has grown in one war from $41,236,800,000 to approximately $200,000,000,000; when this entire burden on humanity has accumulated in but two centuries; when most of it rests on a very few nations; when it is not all but only a part of the cost of war; when the annual interest charge alone, grown in four years from $2,000,000,000 to $10,000,000,000, is equal to more

than the entire indebtedness of any single nation before the war and many times that of most, it is easy to see the difficulty of paying not only interest but principal. The interest charge upon America will in itself be possibly twice the entire annual Federal budget of a few years ago, even if no principal is paid. What might be accomplished by the payment of $10,000,000,000 annually, spent for improving mankind instead of destroying it?

But this is only part of the story. This $10,000,000,000 will be the sum spent annually for interest alone. If the League of Nations should fail it will again be necessary not only to

"The present purpose of the League of Nations is dictated not by any national or group situation, but by the human situation, in the pressure of population on resources due to the wastefulness of our national and international institutions, one instance of which is the institution of war. The real purpose of a League of Nations now is to create a machinery of international cooperation for the conservation of the natural and human resources of the planet. This machinery is latent in the economic system by which the world lives to-day. Cooperation for conservation in various forms has been forced upon the nations by the exigencies of modern life and the very nature of the business system. The only thing that has thus far been able to bring it into play on a large scale is modern war, which however, becomes more and more wasteful and will soon outstrip the conservative capacities of the business system. Now a more peremptory necessity than war is beginning to operate, which will force into action all the conservative functions of the business systems and keep them permanently in action-the supreme necessity of the human situation, the planetary imperative necessity of work, of utilizing to the fullest the creative energies of the race for the maintenance of its existence. The business system is not now conservative. It is or will emerge from the war at best nationally efficient. It will have to become humanly conservative. Politics, national and international, are rapidly becoming chiefly economics; and economics,

maintain, but heavily increase armaments, which including pensions, will add another equal sum, if not $15,000,000,000-a total of 20 to 25 billions. And if we add again the payment of the principal - if the principal ever is paid-think of the staggering burden placed upon mankind, even if no other war follows!

Must we not find some better method of settling disputes between so-called civilized Christian nations than the methods that have not only hopelessly failed to settle anything but that are piling upon humanity. such impossible and increasing burdens?

national and international, must become chiefly conservation."— Virgil Jordan, in prize essay on "The League of Nations-Its Realistic Basis," in The World To-morrow.

FRANCE HONORS MR. PACK

In recognition of the wonderful work he has done through the National War Garden Commission, the Société Nationale d'Acclimatation de France has conferred upon Mr. Charles Lathrop Pack a silver medal, "Grande Module." The award was made on May 25th in the Great Hall of the Museum d'Historie Naturelle, and the presentation was made through the American Ambassador in Paris. This is the first award made by the Société since May, 1914, and is an unusual honor, as the Société is one of the foremost scientific organizations in France. It was organized in 1626 as the Jardin des Plantes, by Cardinal de Richelieu, by order of Louis XIII. In 1698 Louis XIV. ordered a collection of animals added. Thus as a botanical and zoological garden, the institution is the oldest in the world. In 1854 Geoffry Saint-Hilaire, the director, added the scientific interests, and thus came the name, Société Nationale d'Acclimatation de France. Eugene Perrier is now President of the Société and of the Academie des Sciences.

I

S there anything in the idea or plan of a League of Nations to interest the ordinary, average man or woman? And if so, in what way is the average man or woman to be interested in a League of Nations?

These questions may be roughly answered by the asking of two other questions. Is the average man and woman interested in the welfare and happiness of humanity throughout the civilized world? And are they desirous of having those whom they love spared in future the horrors of modern war-as the past four years of world agony have familiarized us all with what modern war meansand of being themselves spared the sorrows, and trials and deprivations which war brings in its wake?

Only a few months ago mention of a League of Nations would be apt to evoke the indifferent or contemptuous assertion that the idea was a mere pipe dream, a visionary and impractical theory, a thing that the nations of the world would never honor by their serious acceptance. Yet in the treaty of peace handed to the German envoys, the League of Nations covenant forms a vital and integral part. The pipe dream has materialized. The vision, without which the people perish, has become a reality upon which a new world faith is based.

Strangely this great new hope of a war-torn and agonized world is con

fronted by the serious possibility of defeat in our own generous, freesouled United States of America through the opposition of the Senate. The Senate will speak as the men and women of America determine that it shall! The issue is not one of

politics, though politics has sought to make of it a party issue. The issue is one as broad and deep and tragic as are the strivings of the human soul for a wider, truer outlook upon life, a saner view of the brotherhood of man, a less narrow and selfish regard for those things that alone make life worth the living.

In this endeavor it is the part of every man and woman of America to have his share. They may safely dismiss from their minds questions of practical politics and expediency, leaving these considerations to the practical politicians with whom the expedient is always the obvious. That side of the matter is in trained hands and is not going to be lost sight of. What is in danger of being lost sight of is the vision and the dream and the aspiration that transmutes dream and vision into practical reality. Moreover, for those Doubting Thomases among us who may be timid lest our country burn its fingers in the fires of altruism, there has been given ample testimony by those competent to judge that there is no danger of disastrous back-fires in the covenant of the League.

What then, is this League, or the idea underlying its voluminously discussed diplomatic phraseology?

We are told by some that four old men, seated about the peace table, have allowed the world to run to revolution while two of them have slyly and insincerely humored the whim of the third for the profit of the fourth at the expense of the nation represented by the third. It would be far truer, as well as less involved, to consider it as the fruit of the earnest endeavor of these four men, backed as they are by the trained intelligence of able advisers, to bring about a workable scheme by which the danger and horrors of future wars may be guarded against and probably frustated. Against this righteous endeavor all the forces of reaction and narrow chauvinism have aligned themselves to interpose every conceivable impediment that might defeat the lofty purpose. Sometimes through an ignorant sincerity, but more often through a deliberate partisan enmity, these forces have sought to wreck the one reasonable basis for the hope of mankind that war between the nations may be made an unlikely thing.

There is talk to-day that in this country a popular referendum will be had as to the people's wishes on this subject. If that is so there will come to the independent voter a duty and a privilege of the gravest moment. He should know what it is in fundamentals for which the League

idea stands. He should know that it is not a one man's fad foisted upon a needy world by force of the official position of one man.. He should

know that it is the most carefully considered result of the thought and labor of many men of many lands, sincerely desirous in this, at least, that the nations be given a workable formula by which inevitable frictions. may be smoothed away before they lead to another world-wide war. He should know that the League idea, as embodied in the Peace Treaty, given to the German envoys, is not a nefariously devised scheme in England's favor, though he will be told by those who have that particular axe to grind that it is. He should know that it does not strike at or

impair the sovereign rights of his country, though his ears may be deafened by the din of those voices eager for their own narrow ends to have him believe that it does. He will need to reject the silly suggestion that the accredited representatives of this country at the Peace Conference are not the accredited representatives, and having rejected that piece of folly he will need to know that they have not betrayed the country in the interests of a visionary dream of internationalism, which may even be represented as socialism-even as Bolshevism. For the intelligent voter may note that it is not so much with the inevitable defects of the draft of the League that with its merits. It is not so much the opposition takes issue as it is because the League may not accomplish this or that in the general interests as it is that America may not be left wholly free to wash her hands of her duty to mankind that those who would have this country remain

non-committal in this respect lift up their voices in vain protest.

Are the American people, of all the peoples of the world, going to set their faces against this realization of the hope of the ages, now in more tangible form than ever before, on the eve of accomplishment? Surely they are not.

The good sense of the American people, the great soul of America, is being heard from-is to be heard from in increasing volume. Not yet has the high enthusiasm which swept America into the culminating force of victory over the dark powers of evil so died down that cold and selfish calculation is ready to take

the place of that righteous wrath which said to Germany: "So far and no farther!" To America, also, as to the other suffering nations, has come the consecration of the supreme sacrifice of her sons. They fought and died not for their own selfish ends. Is this country now to fall back into a vaunted isolation, as false and impossible in fact as in sentiment, and seek to justify itself by the ignoble plea that with the wrongs or the rights of the rest of the world it has nothing to do! That it is which those who oppose the League of Nations would seek to accomplish under the pitiful and tragic fallacy of America for herself!

are:

The smaller nations are re-established, and in many cases delivered from a subjugation which was aimed at their cultural life.

The essentials of freedom are guaranteed to all nationalities by a covenant binding all the powers.

The future of half-civilized and uncivilized peoples is secured by a system of trusteeship to which all civilized states are pledged.

International law is to be broadened and fortified by the establishment of a permanent international court.

Finally, international relations are endowed with a new mechanism for making information public, for simplifying discus

sion, for anticipating differences, and above all, for bringing the representatives of all nations into annual conference.

An American authority has enumerated these five strong points of the League, easily remembered:

1. It is based upon the allegiance of free peoples brought about by the war itself, and it perpetuates and extends that alliance. 2. It provides real and effective organs for international consultation, international findings, and international recommendation.

3. It recognizes international responsibility for other matters than law, including conditions of labor and the interests of the more remote and backward races of the world.

4. It includes a Covenant which, if faithfully lived up to, will make international war difficult, if not impossible, through affording time for inquiry and consultation before an overt act is committed.

5. It has a place for an international court of justice before which questions will be argued, not as matters of interest, but as matters of right and law.