Even to the gaze of the victor,
customers will sink away that were yesterday capable of buying and
paying. Extraordinary risks cannot be undertaken for many a year on our
soil. But everybody will drift over to you--Ministers of Finance,
artists, inventors, and those who scent profits. You will merely have to
free yourselves from dross (and from the trust thought that cannot be
stifled) and to weed out the tares of demagogy; then you will be the
effective lords of the world and will travel to Europe like a great
Nuernberg that teaches people subsequently to feel how once upon a time
it felt to operate in the Narrows.
The scope of your planning and of your accomplishment, the very rank
luxuriance of your life, will be marveled at as a fairy wonder. We,
victors and conquered and neutrals, will alike be confined by duty to
austere simplicity of living. Your complaint is unfounded; only gird
yourselves for a wee short time in patience. Whether the business deals
which you grab in the wartime smell good or bad, we shall not now
publicly investigate. If law and custom permit them, what do you care
for alien heartache? If the statutes of international law prohibit them,
the Governments must insure the effectiveness thereof.
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