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THE OPEN DOOR
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of their countrymen must, if it continues, ripen new dangerous diplomatic situations, and form the substance of conflicting foreign policies and competing armaments. No League of Nations, no Hague Conventions, or other machinery for settling international disputes, are likely to furnish any reasonable security for peace or for reduced armaments, unless this problem of conflicting interests in the profitable exploitation of new markets and backward countries can be solved. Now there is only one line along which solution is possible. We cannot revert to strictly private enterprise, Governments looking on with folded arms, while private companies, with armed forces of their own, fasten political and economical dominion upon rubber or oil or gold fields in Africa or South America, enslaving or killing off the native population, as in San Thomé or Putumayo, and using up the rich natural resources of the country in a brief era of reckless waste. The only alternative is to advance to a settled policy of international arrangement for securing, if