A plan which I proposed some time ago, and which I have now taken courage of the support in modified form by men of large financial and organizing experience to defend, is that the Allied debts be made a permanent trust fund, to be administered for the education of the children of all peoples, so far as they can be so applied. The proposal has been characterized as "good business," not to demand the full payment of these debts with interest of that which we loaned, but spent largely at home, and after we entered the war. The fundamental thought on which I should base the proposal is that the world, as a whole, owes something to the children who have no fair chance in it because of what those upon whom they are naturally dependent have sacrificed for the good of the world as a whole.
My original proposal was that the principal should be cancelled as it was so spent, but Judge Lovett, president of the Union Pacific, has proposed merely the application of the interest at a moderate rate annually to this purpose if and when it can be paid, though he has given it a broader scope--putting education last--the care of widows, orphans, and crippled first--but ultimately it should all be devoted to education.
A ten-billion dollar war debt converted (as a thanksgiving offering for deliverance from something worse than the world knows even at its worst to-day) into a perpetual trust fund for the children of the world, especially for those who have come "trailing clouds of glory" into a part of the world where they haven't a chance to come into the heritage of their generation.
Five hundred million dollars a year (an incredible number of Austrian crowns, Russian roubles, or Polish marks (if indeed the interest could be paid at the rate of five per cent)) which would give an elementary-school training to ten million children each year--as many children as are born each year into the world. And this interest could be paid if armaments were unnecessary.
Ten million children a year taught the best that has been "delivered unto or invented by mankind" (as listed in the world curriculum) and led in their tuition toward the conscious unity of the race--planetary consciousness!
Has a more stirring opportunity ever been offered to any people than is ours in the refunding of the great war debt, in such a way as to make it a blessing to the next generation instead of a crushing burden to the tax-paying generation that now goes bent with its burdens across Europe? If we were to demand our pound of flesh we should deserve the future fate of those in the "Inferno" who went eternally about weighed with cloaks of lead that were covered by a veneer of gold.