Page:The New Protectionism.djvu/137

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CHAPTER IX

THE OPEN DOOR

So far I have discussed the New Protectionism as a complicated form of folly. But it is more than that. It is a crime — I had almost written the crime — against civilization. For its effect, as its intention, would be to perpetuate the present strife by stamping the divisions made for war upon the world of commerce afterwards. Whereas the whole trend of civilization has been to bind the peoples of the world into closer unity of interests and activities by the growing interdependence of commerce, these proposals are directed to a reversal of the movement. Not merely do they seek to cut across the whole delicate network of commercial and human intercourse, but they make precisely that severance which is most

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