Page:The New Protectionism.djvu/127

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CHAPTER VIII

FREE TRADE AS A POLICY

The attempt to discredit Free Trade as a policy which has endangered this country in time of war rests on a particularly reckless perversion of the facts. For the course of the war has shown that the staying power and fighting strength of Great Britain depend in the last resort upon our naval and mercantile supremacy at sea and our dominant position in world commerce and finance. Now, these factors are themselves the products and expressions of our Free Trade policy. Our ownership of half the shipping of the world and our control of commerce over the great world-routes could only have been developed and maintained by our policy of free ports and markets. The vital importance of our mercantile

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