to present
an appeal to the wider and deeper interests of Americans. The refusal
of America not only shuts the gate of hope for millions of war-broken,
famine-ridden people in Central and Eastern Europe, it removes the
keystone for the edifice of a society of nations. For effective
international cooeperation in economic resources and opportunities is
the indispensable condition of such a society. No League of Nations can
survive its infancy without this economic nourishment. The world's
wealth for the world's wants: unless this maxim can in some effective
way be realized, no such escape has been made from the pre-war policy
of greed and grab as will furnish a reasonable hope for a world
redeemed from war--a world clothed and in its right mind.

Is it not the larger and the longer hope and interest of America to
live as a great partner in such a society of nations, rather than to
live a life of isolated prosperity, perhaps the sole survivor in the
collapse of western civilized states? I make this appeal in the
language of Edmund Burke, in his great plea for conciliation with
America, when he reminded his hearers that "Magnanimity in politics is
not seldom the truest wisdom." This, I venture to say, is the true
appeal of Europe to America today. Burke's words, I feel, must kindle
conviction in every generous heart, for in the last resort it is the
desire of the heart and not the calculation of the intellect that
governs and should govern human conduct. For morality among nations, as
among individuals, implies faith and risk-taking, not recklessness,
indeed, but dangerous living, a willingness and a desire to take a hand
in the largest game of life and continually to "pluck out of the
nettle, danger, safety"; but this safety itself only as a momentary
resting-place in the unceasing urge of nations to use their
nationality, not for the achievement of some selfish separate
perfection, but for the ever advancing realization of national ends
within the wider circle of humanity.

_The Riverside Press_
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Morals of Economic Internationalism, by
John A. Hobson

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