the most terrible of the vicious circles in which the
war has bound the world. The weak nations cannot buy, because they are
not producing goods to sell; they cannot produce, because they cannot
buy. What are the strong nations, those with surplus goods, the
transport, and the credit, going to do about it? It is a question of
emergency finance based on an emergency morality. The nations which
have surpluses to sell abroad must not only send the goods but provide
the credit to pay for them if they are to reach the peoples that need
them most. But how, it is said, can you expect the business man in
America or any other country to perform such an act of charity? How can
you expect them to sell to those who have not credit and cannot pay,
instead of selling to those who have credit and can pay? The answer is
sometimes stated thus. It is not charity you are asked to perform, but
such consideration for customers as a really intelligent sense of
self-interest will endorse. We ask you to put up a temporary bridge
over the financial chasm in order to afford time for this restoration
of the ordinary processes of exchange. If the enfeebled industrial
peoples can be furnished now with foods and materials they will set 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,