Page:The New Protectionism.djvu/133

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FREE TRADE AS A POLICY
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supply. How much worse a defence would a tariff prove for us!

But if Protection fails to provide that self-sufficiency in war-time, which is its ostensible object, what shall be said of it as a method of war finance? While Great Britain by a series of increases of direct taxation, almost wholly falling upon current income has raised the revenue from a pre-war level of 175 millions to a figure estimated in 1916-17 to amount to 509 millions, what have the Protectionist nations done towards meeting their costs of war out of current revenue? Virtually nothing. The speech of Dr. Helfferich, Finance Minister for Germany, in the Reichstag, August 20, 1915, is a sufficient testimony to the helplessness of Protectionist finance to meet emergencies: "I explained in March the reasons which determined the German Government against the imposition of war taxes during the period of the war. These reasons will stand. We do not desire to increase by taxation the heavy burden which

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