Page:The New Protectionism.djvu/147

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THE OPEN DOOR
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and undertaken for private profit, must carry its own risks. Why, it is asked, should persons who have staked their property in countries where they know the Government to be corrupt, the administration of law to be uncertain, the treatment of foreigners to be unjust, and who presumably have discounted these very risks in the terms of their investments or their trade, be at liberty to call upon their Governments to use the public resources of their country to rescue them from these risks and to improve the value of these private speculations? The logic of this attitude appears irrefutable. But the politics are utterly unpractical and inconsistent with humanitarian progress. No Government has ever maintained, or can ever maintain, a merely disinterested attitude towards the trade or other economic relations of its nationals with foreigners. Governments admittedly are concerned with the industry and commerce, foreign as well as domestic, of their respective peoples, obtaining for that industry and commerce such

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