Smouldering Fires.

The smouldering fires of much poverty and sweating and some idleness, which may be attributed in part to the incapacity of politicians to face the new dominating economic problems, are real enough, and might be kindled so as to provide the flash-back from an inequitable commercialism to an annihilating warfare. It is conceivable that somewhere in Europe or Asia public opinion could be so fanned to an outburst. But if the common sense of peoples is not proof against international incendiarism, are not the creditor forces of the modern world sufficiently self-interested to intervene and prevent the fanning of the flames of a conflict that means total destruction? They have seen their bonds barely survive the blaze of 1914–18. Is it to be hoped that the inverted pyramid of world debts could stand the shock of another conflagration?