which are bound as they gain in general recognition to constitute the real protection from outside aggression of all States, great or small.
One financial authority from whom I have quoted noted that this elaborate financial interdependence of the modern world has grown up in spite of ourselves, "without our noticing it until we put it to some rude test." Men are fundamentally just as disposed as they were at any time to take wealth that does not belong to them, which they have not earned. But their relative interest in the matter has changed. In very primitive conditions robbery is a moderately profitable enterprise. Where the rewards of labor, owing to the inefficiency of the means of production, are small and uncertain, and where all wealth is portable, raiding and theft offer the best reward for the enterprise of the courageous; in such conditions the size of man's wealth depends a good deal on the size of his club and the agility with which he wields it. But to the man whose wealth so largely depends upon his credit and on his paper being "good paper" at the bank, dishonesty has become as precarious and profitless as honest toil was in more primitive times.
The instincts of the business man may, at bottom, be just as predatory as those of the cattle-lifter or the