THE IftERNATIONAL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE C OMMERCE is the most truly
international thing in the world. It knows no boundaries and moves almost automatically, as do the forces of Nature. Like water, it finds its own level. It is, no doubt, capable, again like water, of being temporarily held: up, or con- trolled ; but essentially it is always a free thing, and obeys the laws of its own being. The first of these laws is that trade is never between countries, but always, in the last resort, betWeen individuals. All commerce is barter, and barter is a reciprocal act between two individuals. But; since trade is a thing which cannot be kept in air-tight cells, and since no one has ever been able effectually to forbid the banns of commerce, it is most right and proper that there should be an Inter- national Chamber of Commerce. There was a great gap to be filled, and the new institution of which I am writing exactly fills it. The International Chamber of Commerce was founded five years ago, and the Third Congress was held in Brussels in June of this year. And a very noteworthy gathering it was. The previous two Congresses had been important, but that of this year showed hOw firm was the foundation on which the work had been built. There were as many as seven hundred and fifty representatives drawn from thirty-three nations. Of these delegates eighty-five were British. The United States of America with her splendid and insatiable desire for consultation and discussion sent no less than two hundred. Belgium supplied ninety-two, France fifty-seven, Holland forty-two, Italy twenty-fiye, Czecho slovakia twenty-two, Sweden seventeen, and Hungary, Japan and Poland ten each. Finally, it is most im- portant to record that within the last few weeks Germany
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has joined the International Chamber. That is a long step in the right direction. The German delegates may feel assured that they will be received on a basis of absolute equality. Their confreres fully recognize that no institution dealing with international trade could regard itself as truly representative unless the greatest trading community of the European Continent were fully recognized. • But, though the numbers are important, quality, not quantity, is the essential thing. The delegates at Brussels were serious business men and represented powerful and stable interests. For example, the President was Dr. Walter Leaf, the chairman of the Westminster Bank and the head of the Bankers' Association. Among the American contingent may be mentioned Mr. Owen D. Young, who can best be described as the guardian angel of the Dawes Scheme. The British delegates included such men as Sir Arthur Shirley Benn, Sir Felix Schuster, Sir Algernon Firth, Sir Arthur Balfour and Sir Alan Anderson. In a word, the delegates were worthy of the objects and aims set before them.
The machinery proyided by the Chamber will enable it " to examine political and commercial proposals that affect all traders, to support the good and to block evil proposals." In a word, it is a poWerful weapon for stability and also for progress, placed in the hands of commerce. Next, as the Report of the " British Com- mittee " points out, the Chamber makes for better understanding. Many delegates who arrived at Brussels " burdened with suspicion and a sense of injury at some aet of a fOreign nation or their foreign competitors " found again and again that their suspicions were due to ignorance. " Friendly and unofficial meetings sent the suspicious delegate ' home ready' to convince hii confreres that 'they win make more progresi by co-operation than by pinpricks." So much for the excellent spirit' in which the Chamber has been founded and has been carried on.
As to the actual work done, I can say with truth that it is a serious contribution to the cause of international intercourse, and that vistas of vast importance have been opened for future. work. First as to what it has done or is doing. There lie before me three or four businesslike and far-reaching Reports. Take, for example, Brochure No. 34 entitled Double Taxation. In it is to be found a survey of the work of the International Chamber of Commerce since the Rome Congress. It will be seen that definite progress has been made along this very difficult road. It is very delicate ground, but I hope I may not be thought to be an unhallowed intruder if I suggest that the investigators and experts should never allow themselves to forget that it is always the human being who pays a tax, and never an inanimate thing. Stocks and stones, and stocks and shares, earth, fire and water have no pockets into which to put their phantom hands, and no power to sign cheques. Though we talk about things being taxed, what happens under these concealing words is the effort to measure the amount for which individual taxpayers have to draw their cheques, by the amount of their possession or occupation of certain specific forms of material wealth. The land, the pictures, the plate, and the houses of dead men cannot be made to exude cheques, but the amount which the inheritors can be made to pay can, of course, be measured by the amount of the material things, and the rights and services to which they succeed. In other words, the distinction between impas reels (taxes in rem) and impots personnels (taxes in personam) is not a true difference, in kind, though in practice, no doubt, the legal distinctions made on the. Continent are of immense importance.
Attached to the point of double taxation is the taxation of such amphibious things as shipping profits, impersonal or schedular taxes, graduated taxation, tax-payer's wealth of capital, and, last but not least, fiscal domicile. llorresco referens .1 My hair stands on *end as I survey the terrible subtleties of Finance Ministers at their wits' end (as a witty Frenchman once said) " to pluck the tax-paying goose in such a way as partly to conceal the operation."
Another of the Brochures, No. 85, is a fascinating as well as most important piece of work. It is entitled To Facilitate the International Circulation of Cheques. Except in the great capitals, one often finds traders and even hotel keepers, who look sad and depressed when one offers them a cheque and declare, " Alas ! Monsieur, we do not understand cheques here. It is not our system." Of course, the various cheques and bills of exchange are only peaks in the same financial mountain range, but it is curious to see how much they differ in their details, I have no doubt, however, that the able and ingenious men who are at work on the Committee will ultimately make clean a field now filled with weeds and thistles.
Most important of all is the Report of the Committee on Economic Restoration. Here we are at rock bottom. What the world wants is greater facilities for exchange —a reforging of the broken links in the great chain of commerce. Until this is done, things are bound to go ill. That it can be thine is not to be doubted for a moment. Let us then wish " God-speed " to the gallant ship " International Chamber of Commerce " and to all who sail and worlt in her.
If our readers want to know more, they have only to communicate with, the British National Committee, 14 Queen Anne's Gate, S.W. 1. J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.
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