A characteristic expedient is pointed out by the well-known Belgian professor of political economy, de Molinari, in an article published in the _Times_. He shows, in the first place, how solidarity among the civilized States of the world has lately increased in a marvellous degree, for not long ago the foreign trade of a civilized nation and the capital invested in other States was of very small importance. Each country produced nearly all the requisites for its own consumption, and employed its capital in its own undertakings. In 1613, the whole of England's imports and exports amounted to only five million pounds sterling. A hundred years later, indeed, the united foreign trade of the whole of Europe did not amount to so much as the present foreign trade of little Belgium. Still more unimportant were the foreign loans. Holland was the only country whose capitalists lent to foreign Governments, and persons were hardly to be found who ventured to put their money into industrial undertakings in foreign lands, or even beyond the provinces in which they dwelt. Consequently at that time a neutral State suffered little or no injury when two States were at war. A quarrel between France and Spain or Germany then did no more harm to English interests than a war between China and Japan would do now. At present it is quite otherwise. Trade and capital have in our day become international. While the foreign traffic of the civilized world two hundred years ago did not exceed one hundred millions sterling, it runs up now to about five thousand millions; and foreign loans have augmented in the same degree. In every country there is a constantly increasing portion of the population dependent for its subsistence upon relations with other peoples, either for the manufacture or exportation of goods, or for the importation of foreign necessaries. In France a tenth part of the population is dependent in this way upon foreign countries, a third in Belgium, and in England probably not far from a third. So long as there is peace, this increasing community of interests is a source of well-being, and advances civilization; but if a war breaks out, that which was a blessing is turned into a common ill. For, not to mention the burden which preparations for defence impose upon the neutral nations, they suffer from the crisis which war causes in the money market, and from the cessation or curtailing of their trade with the belligerent powers. From these facts, de Molinari deduces a principle of justice--NEUTRAL STATES HAVE THE RIGHT TO FORBID A WAR, as it greatly injures their own lawful interests.