edit to sustain them. It is
expensive, if you will, but infinitely less expensive than a war, and,
finally, most of the cost of it will probably be recovered.

Now if that were done, how could a country so dealt with retaliate? She
could not attack all the world at once. Upon those neighbors more
immediately interested could be thrown the burden of taking such
defensive military measures as the circumstances might dictate. You
might have a group of powers probably taking such defensive measures and
all the powers of Christendom co-operating economically by this
suggested non-intercourse. It is possible even that the powers as a
whole might contribute to a general fund indemnifying individuals in
those States particularly hit by the fact of non-intercourse. I am
thinking, for instance, of shipping interests in a port like Amsterdam
if the decree of non-intercourse were proclaimed against a power like
Germany.

We have little conception of the terror which such a policy might
constitute to a nation. It has never been tried, of course, because even
in war complete non-intercourse is not achieved. At the present time
Germany is buying and selling and trading with the outside world, cables
from Berlin are being sent almost as freely to New York as cables from
London and German merchants are making contracts, maintaining
connections of very considerable complexity. But if this machinery of
non-intercourse were organized as it might be, there would be virtually
no neutrals, and its effect in our world today would be positively
terrifying.

It is true that the American administration did try something resembling
a policy of non-intercourse in dealing with Mexico. But, the thing was a
fiction. While the Department of State talked of non-intercourse the
Department of the Treasury was busy clearing ships for Mexico,
facilitating the dispatch of mails, &c. And, of course, Mexico's
communication with Europe remained unimpaired; at the exact moment when
the President of the United States was threatening Huerta with all sorts
of dire penalties Huerta's Government was arranging in London for the
issue of large loans and the advertisements of these Mexican loans were
appearing in The London Times. So that the one thing that might have
moved Huerta's Government the United States Government was unable to
enforce. In order to enforce it, it needed the co-operation of other
countries.

I have spoken of the economic world State--of all