One may well believe the Germans to be misled in this war, and yet properly await opportunity to purchase at the right time their outstanding national bonds when these can be purchased so much more advantageously toward the end of the war than in the beginning of the era of peace, which must in time follow. Is it not just as neutral to purchase German bonds from the Germans as to purchase ships or our own railroad shares from Germany? A great and primary lesson for the United States is in a thorough understanding that this war was caused by tariffs. The United States is the home of protective tariffs. The sentiment under a protective tariff is national selfishness. England has bought in other markets wherever she could buy cheapest, and has kept her ports open to the cheapest markets. This may be her selfishness. It may, however, remain for the United States, while maintaining a protective tariff, to look to larger international relations and admit reciprocal trade-relations. There is a wide field for study here in connection with this war, for the same spirit--the wresting of commercial advantages by tariffs without regard to the fellow nation--is in many countries. We aim in this country to boycott foreign manufactures with the declaration that we should give all the advantages to labor in this country, and keep our money at home. But what do we think when we find that Germany has for years run a boycott against every American enterprise? America's great International Harvester Company, which has made and promoted the great agricultural inventions of the world; the Singer Sewing-Machine Company, that spreads its manufactures over the earth, and brings back the returns to the United States; all American motor-car companies, all American tobacco interests, and, in fact, all foreign companies, are boycotted, or barred, or worked against, throughout Germany. Placards in shop windows say, "Don't buy foreign goods. Keep the money in Germany!" The horrors of backing such a policy by a war machine, that would impose German goods upon other countries and keep the products of those countries out of Germany, is something to contemplate; but the deepest lesson from it is in America, which has the tariffs and not even a defensive war machine. With the Monroe Doctrine so interpreted that no European government can enforce security for its citizens or for the property of its citizens in Mexico, and with a protective tariff under which we can invite countries to send us goods for a series of years and then suddenly bar them out, the United States may be dwelling in a fool's paradise from the political, military, and economic points of view. A united Europe cannot be expected to lay down its arms, while arms are international arbiters, until there is a better understanding of the Monroe Doctrine and European relations to Mexico.