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sh at arms. Before the war, 80 per cent of the sugar consumed in England was produced in Germany. England, under her free trade policy, had permitted German beet sugar interests, fattened upon a government bounty, to destroy the refinery interests in the south of England. The Island gained by the trade because her refineries were turned into sugar canneries. Jams and marmalades therefrom expanded her foreign trade. Germany, however, at the outbreak of this war, proposed to cut off, or tax heavily, England's sugar supply. Into the markets of the world went the British Treasury and in a few days the government was in command of an eighteen months' supply of sugar for the whole of Great Britain. Down went the price of sugar in Germany, and now the government is taking measures to restore prosperity to her sugar interests by a reduction in beet-sugar plantings. The English government is selling sugar in England at a loss, as a war measure, and will not permit sugar purchases in any country where Germany sells her sugar. Nothing but the strain of war could have induced the Bank of England to count a hundred million dollars in gold sent from New York into Canada as a part of the Bank's metal reserve. There is now no reason why this relation should not continue. Why should fifty or a hundred million in gold be sent across the ocean in the spring, to be returned in the fall? The world is going to be still more a unit in finance hereafter. It has taken a generation to educate the world to the right of the individual in the common fund of money, so far as money is needed to effect transfer of credits. This is the keynote in our Federal Reserve act: that business has just as much right to regulation promoting safe and smooth credits as it has to national regulation promoting safe and sound transportation. Out of this war must arise better international relations, and they comprise not alone the relations of peace, but closer relations to international transportation, as respects both ships, international money, and international credit. While many people are looking for financial independence between nations, the United States taking back from Europe in the next three years the larger part of the $6,000,000,000 of American securities owned abroad, it is quite possible that the opposite will take place: a greater interrelation, not only in credits but in investments. If nations are to be more closely knit to
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