greatly enlarged). The result was easy to foresee. Bankers always loan an idle surplus if they can, and it is not surprising then, if we turn to statistics, to see that the loans and discounts of national banks alone have gone up more than $1,000,000,000, and for all the banks the total would not fall far short of $2,000,000,000. Our heap of sand on the gold disk is about one-sixth larger than it was when the war broke out.

What is going to happen to that gold disk when the war is over? What defense have we for our gold reserves? What program of preparedness are we working out to meet the international attack that is threatened to be made upon the gold foundations of our credit system? Do you recognize why that question is of vital interest to every citizen, to every man with a bank account? The interior farmer, merchant or manufacturer, wholly local in his interests, may think he has but the remotest interest in foreign trade. He is, however, interested in bank reserves, and the course of foreign trade as it reacts on those reserves will affect his business future to an extent that may some day amaze him. So long as the war goes on the world will be so tipped askew; in all probability the gold holdings of other countries will continue to fall into our lap. As the gold falls it will be added to our reserves. As those reserves grow, so will grow our credit structure based upon them. When the war is ended we will find all Europe depleted of its gold, staggering under a weight of inflated bank and Government paper, and under the direst stress. To rebuild its stock of gold the point of attack will be our gold reserves.

What defense can we put up? Other means must be found than any that could be provided by legislation, nor do the means lie in the hands of the bankers. They may recognize the danger and, instead of loaning to the limit permitted by law, run with strong reserves, but any surplus that we could expect the bankers to hold would suffice for but a short time

if the drain were severe. We may invest in short-term foreign loans that can be converted into credits to check a gold demand. We have already done some of that and will probably do a good deal

more.

There have been bankers so shortsighted as to object to our making any loans abroad, but I believe the day will come when you will find that those loans convertible into credits, as they will be, will check gold withdrawals and form one of the most important safeguards of our gold stock, but efforts in the way of defense such as excessive reserves or short term foreign investments must be as nothing when compared to what is possible in the form of credits created by exports of produce and merchandise. There is the strength of our defense. Its effective measure will be the size of our exports compared to our imports. size of that favorable balance must form the true defense of our gold stock and that is why every citizen, whether he knows it or not, is interested in the subject that this convention came together to consider.

The

I should like very briefly to indicate some of the advantages and handicaps that seem to me most important in our outlook for foreign trade development. Among our advantages are our unequaled supplies of cheap food and raw material and our vast home market, which gives us a background of largescale manufacturing. This large-scale manufacturing, even under the handicap of wages twice those paid by some of our competitors, still permits us to mainufacture as cheaply as they do. Then we have the advantage of disorganized foreign markets of a long period in the neutral markets, during which the trade of our competitors has been interrupted, giving us an extraordinary opportunity for entering those markets.

Among the handicaps are the facts that our merchants are in a measure untrained and inexperienced in foreign trade. Our laws are framed to pro

hibit co-operation. Although we must face combinations that are not amenable to our laws, we will meet the competition not alone of combined producers but of combined nations erecting tariff barriers specially designed to impede us.

We will feel severely our lack of Government co-operation with business men, and we must meet the competition of other countries where that co-operation will be delivered to the highest degree; where, instead of suspicion of the motives of business men, Governments will confer with men and shape national policies by their advice. and to their advantage.

Can we, with our political theories of compelled competition, stand up against the united co-operative efforts that we will meet from our competitors? Will our Government theory of destroying combinations, no matter how economic in their results, win in a field of neutral competition where our competitors are not so handicapped? It may be so, but when we go into neutral markets we operate under fixed economic laws that Congress can neither alter nor abolish, and we will succeed or fail in the measure in which we place ourselves in accord with those laws.

Let us sensibly remove a lot of ex

isting foolish legislation that is uneconomic in its results, unnecessarily restrictive in its operation, and has been helpful only to politicians of all parties as a basis for demagogic appeals for votes. I do not believe the business life of the country is awake to what it means to have its foreign commerce at the mercy of transportation under foreign flags.

The reason that is so is not because capital craves Government aid, but because it cannot make progress against insurmountable Government handicaps. I believe the real basis of those handicaps does not stand on any honest conception of which is best for the economic welfare of the whole country. Instead, they rest in demagogic class legislation, and the character of that legislation is not so much partisan as it is merely political. We will have the handicap of political institutions that have come to regard the tariff as a political question to be handled by politicians, and we will face the competition of countries that have developed the closest co-operation between Governmental and business agencies in devising and administrating tariffs as scientific instruments for national commercial development and defense.

-Plato.

D

BY

URING the past month the New York State Branch of The World's Court League has been presenting the World Court movement to workingmen during the noon hour These presentations average from two to three a week. Every Sunday evening during June will be given to the churches in the city where the thought of justice through a World Court will be presented.

The week day meetings among the workingmen mean much, when it is understood that the most interesting thing about these meetings is the sterling response which the advocacy of a World Court receives. These men, busy with their daily tasks, have a far-reaching sympathy and recognize the value of such a court as a means of settling international disputes.

Wherever this thought is presented it calls forth such a hearty response as to indicate that that thought was lurking in consciousness just ready to leap forward and this, without exception, as far as we have observed. It is apparent that we are pursuing the right course. Of this, we were quite sure in recognizing the judicial mind, but it was not a feeling regarding the mind which proceeds first from the human and then to the judicial, but we are surprised to find the close combination of the two, issuing in a conscious requirement at once apparent to the common mind.

But if this consciousness exists, what

thing further is necessary? The simple consciousness in itself does not effect anything. It is only when it becomes a conviction that results follow. In this case of the establishment of a World Court it must become a tremendous conviction. This is no small matter, nor is there any less the need of it becoming a fact.

How shall we as a League play our part in assisting the public mind to accept this conclusion? First, and supremely, we must strive to create public opinion in favor of a World Court, and to do this the need and the opportunity converge to the point of concentrated, persistent presentation of the facts.

Where is my part and your part in the realization of this one great end? When we realize that we think about this matter, when we realize that our attitude together with the attitude of our fellows determines this whole mater, it is a very simple thing to be done. If each of us will realize this and center our thought on the fact that war must end, and that by justice secured through a World Court, it will be done

The prime thing that should concern us just now is the hammering of this thought into every open space and every corner in New York State, with vigo quite as intense as men are now central izing their energies on the field of battle stirred to this with fire, the heat will b felt and the glow of the light will extend To this end we are organizing in every

A PROPHECY.

The following is an excerpt from a letter written by John H. Patterson, President of the National Cash Register Company:

I

AM in entire sympathy with the objects of the World's Court League, and I find that I have been in sympathy for quite a number of years. On September 1, 1902, I wrote to our house organ as follows: "European countries will never be on a par with America in the race for commercial supremacy until they reduce their armies. Commercial supremacy means so much, that I prophesy that this will be done during the lifetime of some of our people. I believe that the countries of the world will form a league. All questions of dispute will be left to arbitration, and the different countries will have a common army and navy to enforce the decisions of arbitration and preserve order. One army of the world will suffice for all countries. It is in the great line of progress it is bound to come. What a great saving this will be to the world."

ful which does not recognize the true starting point; which fails to grasp the sociologic fact that everything in the last analysis comes back to the individual, and since the first ten years-pronounced by all authorities the crucial period of individual development-is in the mother's hand, it is plain that every problem is primarily the mother's problem. She is fundamental in creation, fundamental in education. Now put beside this gigantic fact of motherhood with its unique opportunities for moulding character and directing the conduct of nations, the colossal blunder of the ages-that nowhere in the world's history has there ever been any large, systematized, consciously directed effort to fit women for motherhood!

For every trade, profession, or vocation in the world, we have had schools of training, while the most important business in the world-that of mothering and training the race in its plastic formative stage has been left to chance and the maternal instinct, which is not always present, and even at its best is no more sufficient for securing good results in the mother-business, than a natural aptitude for law, medicine, or architecture would insure success in these professions without technical training. As a result, we have this profoundly vital sociological work performed by ignorant, incompetent hands for the most part, for many a woman is ignorant of the essentials of her mother-job, who is by no means ignorant of the learning of the schools.

It is true the mother supplies the ma terial for the new being, and at much cost of weariness and pain; but this service is involuntary, and rendered too often, alas! in unthinking ignorance or sullen repugnance-even as the rudest