Page:The New Protectionism.djvu/131

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FREE TRADE AS A POLICY
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tariff wars between Germany and Russia, Austria and Italy, and the oppressive tariff placed by Austria on Servia, have been active influences in fomenting national hostilities and in stimulating preparations for this war.

British Free Trade could not keep the world at peace. But it has helped to keep Britain at peace. Can anyone seriously suppose that in this dangerous world Great Britain would have been permitted to gain and to hold so huge a territorial Empire scattered over the wide world, or to wield, virtually uncontested for so long a time, the supremacy of the seas, had not the natural jealousy and envy of other Powers been abated by the freedom and equality of commerce which we gave to traders of all nations? The closer Protection and the discriminative tariffs of our self-governing dominions, taken together with the threats of a withdrawal of our free Imperial markets, are among the admitted causes of the later war-policy of Germany. If we had claimed the most

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