Thus it came about that on a brilliant sun-lit day last June twoscore men sat round a long table in a stately room of a palace that overlooked the Seine, in Paris. Eminent lawmakers--Hughes, of Australia, among them--were there aplenty; but few practical business men. On the walls hung the trade maps of the world; spread before them were the red-dotted diagrams that showed the water highways where traffic flowed in happier and serener days. For coming generations of business everywhere it was a fateful meeting because the now famous Economic Conference of the Allies was about to reshape those maps and change the channels of commerce. All the while, and less than a hundred miles away, Verdun seethed with death; still nearer brewed the storm of the Somme. These men were assembled to fix the price of all this blood and sacrifice, and they did. In what has come to be known as the Paris Pact they bound themselves together by economic ties and pledged themselves to present a united economic front. They unfurled the banner of aggressive reprisal with the sole object of crushing the one-time business supremacy of their foes. The chief recommendations were: To meet, by tariff discrimination, boycott or otherwise, any individual or organised trade advance of the Central Powers--already Germany, Austria, Turkey and Bulgaria have reached a commercial understanding; to forego any "favoured-nation" relation with the enemy for an indefinite period; to conserve for themselves, "before all others," their natural resources during the period of reconstruction; to make themselves independent of enemy countries in the raw materials and manufactured products essential to their economic well-being; and to facilitate this exchange by preferential trade among themselves, and by special and state subsidies to shipping, railroads and telegraphs. Another important decree prohibits the enemy from engaging in certain industries and professions, such as dyestuffs, in allied countries when these industries relate to national defence or economic independence. In short, self-sufficiency became the aim of the whole allied group, to be achieved without the aid or consent of any other nation or group of nations, be they friends or foes. Here, then, is the strategy that will rule after the war. A huge allied monopoly is projected--a sort of monster militant trust, with cabinets of ministers for directorates, armies and navies as trade scouts, and whole roused citizenships for salesmen. Throughout this new Bill of World Trade Rights there is scant mention of neutrals--no reference at all to the greatest of non-belligerent nations. Yet the document is packed with interest, fraught even with highest concern, for us. Upon the ability to be translated into offensive and defensive reality will depend a large part of our future international commercial relations.