Evening journal., 1915-09-25

freight bills which we owe to for
eign shipping for carrying our inter-
national trade. Those two items
alone cannot be figured at less than
half billion dollars a year. And
then there is gold now coming to us
steadily. And then there is the
emergency coin of the principal OF
those American securities-the stocks
and bonds which can be put down
on our counters by holders Of them
in payment Of anytheing that they
buy in this country.
Now it ought to be perfectly clear
to anybody that if the outside world
has couple of billion dollars of
commodities and a half billion dol
lars Of interest dividends and ocean
freight bills and many millions of
gold with which to pay us every year
Tor ordinary commodities bought
from us, and that il Great Britain
and France have some three or four
or five billion dollars of American
securities which, as a last resort. can
be turned over to us in payment for
goods bought from us-it ought to
be clear to anybody that it can make
precious little difference. either on
the other side of the Atlantic or ON
this side, whether an American loan
for $700,O00,000 is used. every single
penny of it, to pay for American
arms and ammunition bought here
or whether $70C.0O0,OOO is taken ont
OF those $4,000. 100000 a year of inn
port credits and used to paw for gun
powder. cartridges and shells. while
the $1O0,000000 of credit nofes are
substituted to pay for wheat and
And nobody can ever discover with
lust what "cOin"-the credit notes or
the imported commodities-anv Of
the bills are being paid; for com
modities imported here will buv ex-
change on exactly the same terms as
credit notes will buy IL and when
that exchange is offered in payment
Tor either breadstuffs or explosives
nobody will know through what
medium II came and nobody viii care
80 while there isn't going to be
cannot be, any practically difference
IN the working out of the use of the
credit notes in this country there
isn't going to be and can't be anv
moral difference either Nobody that
understands how the imports of com
modities, the interest dividends and
freight bills due by us abroad and
the credit notes will all be in the one
total foreign purchasing fund, inter
changeable among themselves and
possible Of substitution, any one of
them for any other one of them for
any other one of them. as a method of
payment can believe that there is
and nobody ought to pretend thai
there is
II every penny of the so-calIed war
loan were going openly and directly
INTO arms and ammunitions as every
penny of IL can and will 90 indirectlv
as we Know it will, we ought not to
Try TO make the very slightest excuse
Tor the fact. We have just as much
right to sell the gunpowder. the car.
tridges and the shells as we have IN
sell the cotton, the wheat and the
sugar We have just as much rigbt
10 sell the one on credit as the other
we ought to scOrn the false senti.
ment and the bald hypocrisy de.
manding that the bankers arrange
the American loan only on condition
that it shall not be used to paw for
American arms and ammunition
when all that will happen if il isn't
used that way is that the imports of
commodities and returns from and
proceeds of American securities
which hitherto have been used for
paying for our peace exports will be
switched into paying for our war
exports.