EXHIBITIONS, CONGRESSES, AND WAR.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1424, 7 September 1878, Page 3

EXHIBITIONS, CONGRESSES, AND WAR.

[London “ Times.”] The Paris International Exhibition is in itself a congress of the world’s trades. Other congresses, representing ideas other than strictly those of trade, naturally group themselves round the centre the exhibition offers. The Literary Congress is scarcely over before wo have to announce the meeting of a con-

gross to disseminate a doctrine which the professors of literature have not always taught, at any rate by example. The Soci6tts dea Institutions des Prevoyanco has called its friends together, and they held their first sitting on Monday last. No less appropriate towni, it might be supposed, than Paris could be found for the assembling of a society for the inculcation of thrift. Of all cities, Paris might seem to he the one where that virtue is least practised. On the other hand, however, of all countries, Franco is, perhaps, that where it has most adherents. The French peasantry are the most frugal class of the kind in Europe, as Paris is the most luxurious of European capitals. Yet Franco has less to tell England on the art of thrift than England has to teach France. The French peasant’s notion of putting by against a rainy day was till lately confined chiefly to the simple accumula-

tion of francs. Wo would wish that the English peasant had arrived even at that low stage of the art. But the middle class, and even the artisan class, in England have gone a step further. Savings-banks, and insurance offices, and provident and co-operative societies have raised in this country the art of combining the aavings of individuals to the dignity of a science. These institutions are far from unknown in France, and M. de Malarco, at the opening of the congress, which our Paris correspondent described on Tuesday, wag able to boast that a thousand savings-banks had been founded in the last fifty years. But the same advantage is not taken of them as in this country ; and French insurance societies cannot compare with the sturdy development of the principle, not merely in the United Kingdom but in the United States. Co-operative societies, which are here revolutionising trade, have been treated on the other side of the Channel mainly as Socialist agencies, and have accordingly been frowned upon by the State. The Latin races, which cannot live contentedly, except in communities, and would think the pleasant cottages dispersed about English fields and lanes penitential cells, apply the doctrine of combination very reluctantly to money. Our working men can teach them, through the congress, some important truths on this matter. We only wish it were possible for an international society for the promotion of thrift to impart to English households the secret every French household possesses of making the income, whether small or great, whether the day’s wages or the year’s savings, produce the maximum of domestic comfort.

The Thrift Congress is a very good example of the multitude of meetings which have found in the International Exhibition a motive or pretext for their existence. Three more, to be held at the Trocadero, have just been authorised. Land surveyors, wo are told, are to assemble on the istli, homcoopathists on the 12th of August, and friends of the blind on the 3rd of September. Among the Congresses nob connected with the Exhibition may be mentioned the International Bibliographical Congress (Catholic), which opened on the 2nd instant. Some of these represent principally one active and energetic promoter, who has worked with effect on the natural inclination of men to discover a reason for holiday-making in Paris. Others we do not venture to inquire into. Why a meeting to play chess should be styled a chess congress is a mystery it would bo audacious to attempt to fathom. In some occult fashion, wo presume, the victories of the Russian and the defeats of the Wurtemberg champion may be taken to solve deep problems how to parry the most subtle gambit. We can only admire the more the modesty of the exhibitors of prize cattle and dogs in calling a show a show, and shall not affect to be surprised at hearing of the opening of an international poultry congress. But oven the congresses which are only so many fairs, or clubs, represent the craving in these latter days for a wider area of human society than a kingdom or even a nationality can furnish. Others, like the Literary and Economic Congresses, the Thrift Congress, and the contemplated Bimetallic Congress, are International Exchanges, as much as the International Exhibition itself. The only difference between it and them is that they arc bazaars for the comparison and barter, nob of steam-engines and cabinet-work and jewelry, but of ideas. Men who have spent their energies in working out problems of humanity have felt as keenly as manufacturers the impulse of the current to which international exhibitions gave an extraordinary impetus. They have shown as vehement a desire as any inventor of machinery to burst the political harriers which have hitherto hemmed in social reforms. We scarcely can appreciate as yet to what lengths this stream is bearing us. As we glance at the catalogue of Paris congresses it might seem as if the whole framework of society wore destined by one or another body of inquirers to be thrown into the cauldron of debate and boiled up afresh. But congresses have their natural and impassable limits. Nothing can, in fact, come out of them which lias not been first put into them, They arc much more of symptoms than agencies, effects rather than causes. When people have made up their minds, a meeting, whether at Berlin or at the Trocadero, is a convenient apparatus for expressing their agreement. Such assemblies are the more to be welcomed on that account. Jealousy might bo stirred by these self-constituted parliaments at Paris if there were any real apprehension that they were legislating for the world, The utmost they can actually do is to report and investigate the conclusions at which the nations have arrived. In some points it were much to he desired that they had more practical power. The members of the Oongvetsos which meet at Paris, even of fiat which mimics war on a chess-board, wo may feel assured, lift up their voices with one accord against the most anti-social of human employments. Unhappily, international intercourse is no ahsiluto in- uraneo against war. Sometimes the acquaintance of nations with each other’s tendencies and resources is itself a motive to it. The best hope of a millennium of peace ia that Etatoa will gradually grow out of the iust for territory, which is at the root of nine wars out of ten. Interna-

tonal exhibitions arc no specific for the ccomplishment of this result • but they offer

other objects of national ambition, by the side of which political covetousness may in time become powerless. An industrial population which has established a network of commercial relations with all the Staton of the earth has given so many pledges against capricious

belligerency. Commercial interests will never overpower a passion for war when once inflamed ; but they may quench the spark as it falls. The aim of international exhibitions is not to enable one nation’s trades to filch customers from those of another nation, but to show the world’s manufacturers how more adequately to meet the wants of the world’s customers. The more completely international exhibitions fulfil their object the greater must be the inducement among subjects to check their rulers in a course which will have the effect of shutting up half the shops at which they deal.

International literary, and provident, and economic congresses cannot proffer such material arguments against war as can international exhibitions. Governments are not composed of men of science, nor, at any rate in their Ministerial capacity, of philanthropists. They will not abstain from war from the fear that it may prevent the propagation of true view's on copyright or currency, any more than Italian patriots abstained from coveting Rome out of regard for the comfort of the (Ecumenical Council. But the international communication of ideas widens the area of human thought, and teaches, not, perhaps, the public directly, but the leaders of public opinion, to understand their mutual interests. A congress is not the only means, nor is it always even the best moans, of promoting this international sympathy of intelligence. Congresses have a fascination for the huge class of persons of leisure whose leisure is duo to the fact that no man cares to employ them. They are often visionary in their discussions, and are almost always impracticable in their conclusions. The circumstances of the respective communities they represent are so different that, when they attempt to recommend a reform, they are obliged so to isolate it from actual facts that it ceases to have any human significance. But international congresses are important as a sign of the times. They testify to the desire of thinkers, as of other manufacturers and consumers, to have the world for their market, and not a single State. The difficulty in their patli is that ideas translated into a common language are liable to lose their raciness, and therefore their strength. For the present they must be satisfied to “ compare notes,” as M. Laboulaye advised the Institutions des Prdvoyance Congress on Monday, us to social reforms. The reforms themselves these assemblies can do but little towards introducing. An international congress, whether on economy or on copyright, will not bo able to arrive at conclusions which shall be fully intelligible to the nations at large until thought circulates freely throughout the world and is insensible to political boundaries. But by the time nations recognise precisely the same principles of trade, economy, and morality political boundaries, it may be expected, will have themselves disappeared.