HKB
to work, and in the course of time they will be able, out of the product of their industry, to repay your advances and reestablish the normal circle of exchange.
In presenting this course as a policy of intelligent self-interest, I am not really disparaging the claims of humanity or of morals. I am merely maintaining the utilitarian ethics which insist that morality, the performance of human obligations, is the best policy, that policy which in the long run will yield the fullest satisfaction to social beings. If I were an American exporter in control of large amounts of food, it would doubtless pay me better personally at the present time to sell it to firms in European countries which have good credit, for consumption by people who are in no great want. As an individual business man, I could hardly do otherwise with any assurance of financial profit. I am not here presenting the issue as a matter of individual morals. If the surplus of economic supplies is to be distributed according to needs, on an emergency credit basis adjusted to that end, it is evident that this can be done only by international cooeperation. This shifts the moral problem from the individual to the nation. Rich nations, or their governments, are asked to assist poor nations by making an apportionment of goods and credit which the individual members of the rich nations, the owners of the surplus, would not make upon their own account. The edge of this issue should not be blunted. If the people and government of America were only concerned to let their individual citizens extort the highest prices they could get for their surplus in the best markets, they would let Central and Eastern Europe starve. If, however, they also take into account the social, political, and economic reactions of a starving Europe upon the future of a world in which they will have to live as members of a world society which must grow ever closer in its physical, economic, and spiritual contacts, they may decide differently. The issue arises in the highest economic sphere, that of finance. Are the nations and governments of the world sufficiently alive to the urgency of the situation to enter into an organization of credit for the emergency use of transport and for the distribution of foods and materials on a basis of proved needs? The richer nations, in proportion to their resources, would appear to be called upon to make a present sacrifice for the benefit of the poorer nations in any such pooling of credit facilities. That risk of sacrifice, however, need not be great, and need not be felt at all by the individual members of rich nations, provided that the hitherto unused resources of national credit can be built into a strong structure of mutual support. If America were invited to find adequate credits for Italian or Polish needs at the present time, she might well hesitate. But if a consortium of European governments, including Britain and the richer neutrals, were joint guarantors of such advances, this cooeperative basis might furnish the necessary confidence. It is not within my scope to discuss the various forms a financial consortium might take; whether America, as representative of the creditor nations, should enter such a consortium, or should approach the organized credit of Europe in the capacity of a friendly uncle. It must suffice here to indicate the moral test which this grave issue presents to the nations regarded as economic powers.
Upon the policy adopted for this emergency will doubtless depend in large measure the whole future of economic internationalism. For not only does confidence grow with effective cooeperation, but upon this post-war cooeperation between nations for an emergency commerce and finance, or its rejection, will depend not only America's future place in a world society but the structure of that world society in its essential character.