The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 1912. SAVIOURS OF SOCIETY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 224, 20 March 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 20, 1912. SAVIOURS OF SOCIETY.

Mr. Xornian Angell, who has been re- | vealing to the world its "Great Illusion" about war, walked into the city of London recently aad told the money-chang-ers there that unconsciously the world's bankers were becoming the saviours of human society and peace bringers to the world. In other words, he had been invited Jk> address "The Institute of Bankers," and so great was the desire to hear him at the London institute that, the doors had to be closed against a large crowd for whom there was no room. Mr. Norman Angell himself is so coldly logical and his argument is so unemotional that there is some danger j that the. full ethieal bearing and social i possibilities and certainties of what he I said should be missed. But the gist of ! it is: That banking all unconsciously is bringing peace to the world by making nations financially interdependent; that the material side of wealth represented by banking makes for and not against a better human society and the higher welfare of the race; and that the world's granary (not represented only by corn) has enough and to spare for all mankind so long as men and women work together for mutual good. Here obviously is a basic ethical principle which is at the root of all progress and" social reform. That great Jew, Paul, perhaps did not foresee that the international bankers of the world (mainly Jews)> would become the apostles of his great gospel that "We being many are every one members one of another." Was it to teach the world this great truth through the medium of cash that the wandering Jew has been permitted to be hounded through history—without a home, but always a Jew? Mr. Norman Angell himself shows that the lesson could not be taught in that way until our day. The time was not yet ripe. Here we give in Mr. Angell's own words some of the main statements in'his paper [to London's bankers: "I want to treat of banking as a permanent and integral part of the great social organism—the outcome of functions which are as vital, as unconscious and as uncontrollable as respiration, or digestion in the case of an animal organism. I think I can show you that banking, in this large sense; thanks to the evolution and development of those sensory nerves, is bound to bring about not merely a considerable, but a revolutionary, change in the general conduct of the organism which we call human society—bringing vividly to its consciousness certain errors in conduct, errors which become increasingly painful by reason precisely of the developments of its nervous system. And this sensitiveness is shown, of course, mainly where the organism works with most difficulty: in the relationship between nations. And I believe that in the never-ending struggle which every

nation carries on, in the attempt to adapt itself to environment, it is bound to discard more and more certain habits which have marked it in the less developed stage. What turns the world into a volcano, ever threatening eruption? The necessity for defence? But that implies that someone may attack—has a motive for attack, and, if the danger is so imminent as these vast preparations would suggest, it means that such a motive must be a strong one. And it is the assumption that this strong motive does exist which.creates the whole situation. Well, I want to show you that it is the function of banking to play a dominant part in the absolute breakup of this whole philosophy; that this conception has become, by virtue of the forces at work during the last halfcentury, and. especially during the last twenty or 'thirty years, obsolete. That a nation's'prosperity does not and cannot depend upon its military power, that wealth in the modern world has become intangible so far as conquest or confiscation is concerned; that military power cannot latently or actively control markets to its own advantage; that, indeed, the whole assumption that the political entity can be made to coincide with the economic entity, in a, world in which the: economic frontiers expand and contractf in infinite degrees and in infinite directions yearly, almost daily, ignores the most potent forces touching the proposition; that political power has ceased to be a determining factor in the economic sphere; that it is an outrageous absurdity to represent a nation, a large part of whose population would starve to ■death but for the economic co-operation .of other nations, as a separate entity struggling against other distinct entities: that nations are no longer such separate organisms, but interdependent parts of the same organism; that the whole- biological analogy has been misapplied; arid that banking is the final expression of fie forces destined to make clear these propositions—to render military force economically futile."