Secretary Lansing made two statements in his testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, either of which is sufficient to justify the defeat of the league of nations as being inimical to the future of American

commerce.

One was that the "freedom of the seas was not discussed." While it later appeared in President Wilson's belated submission of his draft that a weak and innocuous mention was made of this subject, it did not even skim the surface of "navalism," the real menace of world peace. And the other, that the secret treaty between England and Japan, by which England gave something she did not own to a nation which had no right to receive it, was known before the terms of the peace treaty were decided, and objection was made against it to Mr. Wilson, without effect, by himself and his colleagues.

When the nation contrasts the verbal chastisement which Mr. Wilson gave Italy over the Fiume claims, largely of academic interest to this country, with his concealment and final indorsement, against the advice of his colleagues, of the pro-English-anti-American antihonor and decency Shantung deal, it must be admitted that the American people have shown wonderful patience, although there is little doubt of their resentment and determined opposition, which will be shown in the final action of the United States Senate.

The President has decided, however, that the league must go through, whatever happens, and, with his marvelous skill in phrasing, dragged into his address to Congress on the "cost of living" an appeal to wage earners to come to his assistance. Before doing this, workmen and manufacturers should consider the consequences to themselves, their families, and the Nation.

Sir Walter Raleigh said that the control of shipping meant control of world trade, and this meant control of the world.

For more than 20 years the need of a foreign market for the surplus products of the United States has been manifest. To facilitate access to the trade of the Orient and the Far East, which is thrown away by the Shantung steal, President Roosevelt built the Panama Canal to offset the advantages to British shipping of the Suez Canal. When it was completed, an advantage to American ships using it was given by law. This displeased Great Britain, which protested without effect until the Democratic administration came into power in 1913, when, in violation of campaign promises, the law was repealed.

Britain was not only mistress of the seas, but could and did control adversely the internal policies of this country designed to encourage and extend our sea power.

Under improved methods of production, tremendously stimulated by the war, the workers of the United States can produce in eight months all that the country can consume in a year. The solution of unemployment and its accompanying evils is in disposing of our surplus products of manufacture in the open markets of the world. The neglect, as admitted by Secretary Lansing, even to discuss at Paris the matter of the freedom of the seas is unexplainable, when we realize that in a United States Senate investigation held in 1913, recorded in several volumes of testimony, it was conclusively demonstrated, and admitted by the representatives of the Shipping Trust, that under trust methods it was impossible for the United States before the war to build or maintain a merchant marine.

HOW FOREIGNERS HIT BOSTON PORT.

A small body of foreigners sitting in an office in London could, and did, not only determine the price and character of American freight, but could determine and limit the ports in America from which freight and passengers could be sent. Means were provided where competition by independent American transportation companies was made impossible. Baltimore, Boston, and Philadelphia were forced to build and maintain expensive marine terminals, the use of which the Shipping Trust received free, while the alien ships receiving these favors had to pay for similar facilities in their home ports.

This was possible only because it was within the power of the Shipping Trust to close to foreign trade any one of these ports refusing to comply with its demands.

Neglect of the United States after the Civil War to maintain its sea strength left it at the beginning of the great war with its merchant marine only twofifths what it was in 1855 and substantially the same tonnage as the United States had in 1810.

Under Shipping Trust control exports of the United States were restricted largely to the food and raw materials which Europe could not get along without.

As a result of this control, the price of products, such as cotton, copper, potash, food, meat, and grains was in most cases dominated in England, and in some combinations by England and Germany together.

ENGLAND FLOUTS AMERICAN RIGHTS.

During the war England contemptuously disregarded and opposed our business rights. It held up our ships dealing with neutral nations, blacklisted and confiscated our products, and refused to permit our doing business with neutral countries, while it sold the same kind of goods to these neutrals. In its effort to get control of trade formerly done by Germany it shut us out of South America. When our progressive manufacturers attempted to build up the dye industry it put embargoes on exports to the United States of logwood and barks from Central America-all this through its control of the

seas.

Cotton grown in the Southern States was sold by English middlemen to continental European manufacturers at a lower price than the same cotton could be bought by cotton manufacturers in New England. Of eighteen millions' worth of manufactured cottons imported into Argentina the year before the war, the United States, the greatest producer of raw cotton in the world, sold but $300,000 worth.

One can not read a daily paper without seeing various items which indicate that England has her finger in every business pie in all corners of the world. Further, nothing in the league of nations prevents-in fact, it encourages― the right of England and Japan to prefer each other in their respective colonies and thus automatically to discriminate against the products of the United States.

Nothing in the league regulates or prevents shipping arrangements to be carried so far as to create lower rates for Japanese and British shipping than for United States commerce.

ANOTHER BLOW TO AMERICAN TRADE,

In June, 1916, there was held at Paris an "economic alliance" of the Entente Powers, which, while the purposes were disguised, was actually designed to substitute a system of trade preferences for the most-favored-nation relation upon which the commercial intercourse of Europe and America rested before the war. It was openly stated at this Paris conference that this would operate against the competition of the United States, and carry its commerce below normal equity in world commerce.

The feeling of the British shipping interest toward the United States was expressed in the following quotation under date of August 10, 1916, from Fairplay, the leading journal devoted to shipping finance in England:

"America so far has evaded the fight, but she is bound to recognize two things (apart from the fact that we are not out to be beaten): Firstly, that the nations who win this war, whether they be the Allies or the Central Powers, will not be in a temper to stand any nonsense from any neutrals; that the winning combatant countries will represent the main armed forces of the world, and that no one else will be in the running. Secondly, America will appreciate that the Allies, pace Mr. Asquith, do intend, where it pays them to do so, to put up a tariff wall between themselves and neutrals. They mean to restore themselves and to become self-supporting-at some expense it may be while the operation lasts, but certainly not for the benefit of neutrals. And if this be so, then America has perhaps a somewhat awkwardly restricted market. She has already experienced the pleasure of a Chinese boycott, but at the close of the war she will be facing as a competitor a Japan which economically, financially, and by treaty is a vastly different proposition from the Nation which could be openly flouted over California issues a few years back."

WRITTEN AFTER SECRET PACT WITH JAPAN.

The fact that this friendly comment was written shortly after the secret treaty between Japan and England was made is so significant that comment is not necessary.

In January, 1917, at the very time when Balfour and Vivioni were in the United States pleading with President Wilson for American intervention, a great convention was being held at Pittsburgh by the United States National

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Foreign Trade Council, at which 1,000 delegates from the largest business concerns in the United States were protesting against the action of the l'aris Alliance and devising methods to avert its threatened consequences.

It is believed by many that the growth in United States exports during the war is a healthy indication of progress and that we are on a firm foreign-trade basis. It is, in fact, quite the contrary, because this increase has been brought about almost wholly by the export of war needs, which substantially ceased with the war. Our trade balance during the war on a peace basis went steadily downward. We gained money during the last five years in our foreign trade, but not business.

Nothing practical has been done by the United States Government to stabilize our foreign commerce, and the league of nations threatens it with paralysis.

A most important but little considered factor in British plans is its control of the mechanics of news distribution. Through this power it could and did during the war refuse to neutral nations the right to communicate with each other on their strictly neutral business and personal matters. Before the war merchants in the United States complained repeatedly of interference with their mail and cables.

While the world is compelled to get the consent of any one notion to sail the seas or freely to communicate with each other, the liberty for which the war was won is a meaningless word. Under date of August 8, 1919, the United States Foreign Trade Council announces the appointment of a committee to take up the matter of American systems of cables and wireless. Present conditions are described as "intolerable."

Any nation that, in addition to control of the seas (which Great Britain has under the league) can dominate the world's food supply of the earth, is double master of the world's destiny. In 1912 James J. Hill called attention to the progressive diminution in food production of the United States, and looking ahead not for a year, but a generation, there is no question but that the United States and Canada are fast getting in a position where they will not be much more than able to feed themselves. The same conditions apply in South America and Australia. If the peace treaty and league are approved, England, which can not produce within its own island boundaries food enough to supply it for more than two months in the year, is in control of the future food supply of the world.

When the attempt was made by Cecil Rhodes to reduce the Boer Republic to vassalage to Great Britain, afterwards successful, after one of the most iniquitous wars in the world's history, he openly declared it his ultimate purpose to paint the map of the world red, and as the first step to run a railroad line from Cairo to the cape.

The treaty of peace has actually painted Africa red, and it is important for us in this country to know that in Africa there has been turned over to England one of the largest potential food areas left in the world, and American assistance is also being exerted to place Siberia, the second largest potential unused food-supply area in the world under the control of Great Britain.

WHEN BRITISH ATTITUDE WILL CHANGE.

A Great Britain freed from dependence on the food supply of the United States will be a vastly different nation to deal with than a Great Britain which would starve without us.

Since the war the United States has become the creditor nation of the world. If we gauge correctly the sentiment of the people of this country we are safe in assuming that the tremendous debts due the United States by the rest of the world will not be used as a source of exploitation, coercion, or oppression, but since we are in the dominant financial position by virtue of our national resources, there is no reason why we shall permit injustice to be done the people of our country by allowing British financial manipulation to neutralize this situation adversely to our national interest.

England has a floating debt of twenty-seven billions, eight and a half of which comes due this year. There is a balance in favor of the United States of more than four billions. On the ordinary basis of business England is to-day bankrupt, with internal, economic conditions making it worse.

There are signs and portents of a secret campaign now beginning, which has for its object the purpose of repudiating not only the interest, but the principal, of the United States war loans. It may be that somehing of this nature must be agreed to by the United States to save the world, but whatever action is taken must not be to restore England's lost financial leadership, but equally to sustain the credit and economic security of all nations alike. Only a rigid inquiry by the Congress into these questions, and especially as to the process by which the exchange value of the pound sterling is being maintained at what many believe to be an artificial ratio, at the expense of the United States, will enable the people to deal fairly with debtor-nations, and in the real spirit of world peace determine the problems and responsibilities of the position of the United States as a creditor for the world.

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MAY CLOSE FAR EASTERN OPEN DOOR."

Aside from the humiliating betrayal of China, our best friend and most powerful potential partner among the nations, in its sacrifice to the commercial ambition of England's ally and secret partner, Japan, the people of the United States are vitally concerned in the control of the "Key to the Orient" by Japan and England. Hong Kong, the other important entrance to China, is also in control of Great Britain, whose joint control with Japan of Kiaochow will mean the abandonment of the policy of the "open door" established as a result of American diplomacy. It will give monopoly to the two principal competitors of the United States to a market of a half billion people. While the principal opposition to the Shantung pact is based on our betrayal of a friend, he commercial consequences to America of approving any league which shuts it out of the open door to the Orient merits serious consideration.

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Other items might be added to this protest. The tremendous expansion during the war of the United States merchant marine, on an oil burning basis, frees this country from the dependence on English coaling bases throughout the world, which have been the principal sources of her sea strength. The change of motor power from coal to oil would have given opportunity, under real "freedom of the seas," for the United States to compete on a basis of equality. British control of the oil fuel fields in Russia, China and Mexico should be denied and these localities made free for themselves and the world.

These considerations are presented in the belief that they are American issues vitally connected with the discussion regarding the league of nations, which, as proposed, settles every one of them adversely to the United States.

If America is true to herself in this crisis, the decision of the United States Senate will transform and purify the politics, policies, and business practices of the whole world.