The second winter of war had passed, and with it much of the dark night
that enshrouded the Allies' arms. On land and sea rained the first blows
of the great assaults that were to make a summer of content for the
Entente cause. Its arsenals teemed with shells; its men were fit;
victory, however distant, seemed at last assured. The time had come to
prepare a new kind of drive--the combined attack upon enemy trade and
any other that happened to be in the way.
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.
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