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Money

classics. History, whether we read it or live in it, makes nothing clearer. Mr. Henry Ford is credited with saying that he would not give a nickel for all the history in the world; but though he can, and does, forbear to read it, he has to live in it with the rest of us, and learn its lessons first-hand. No one desired the welfare—or what he conceived to be the welfare—of mankind more sincerely than he did; and he was prepared to buy it at a handsome figure. Yet Heaven refused to sell, and earth, inasmuch as the souls of men are not her possessions, had nothing worth his purchase.

The price of war can be computed in figures; the price of peace calls for another accountant. The tanker, Gold Shell, which first crossed the "forbidden" zone did more than a score of peace ships could have done to secure the civilization of the world. Its plain sailors who put something (I don't

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