Page:The New Protectionism.djvu/161

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE OPEN DOOR
137

nations, or groups of nations, not indifferent but actively hostile to one another in all parts of the earth, and incessantly engaged in fighting one another by tariffs, boycotts, Navigation Acts, and every weapon and barrier they can command, reducing the total productivity of the earth, increasing the difficulties of transport and commerce, and enforcing the application of an ever-growing proportion of each nation's wealth to war preparations which ever tend to fulfil the fearful purpose for which they are designed? Or are we to trust to the salutary effects of a Free Trade which has not yet been adequately tried, and to the extension of its principles to the new conditions of international intercourse by the establishment of public international control and guarantees? Place the risks and the difficulties of this latter policy as high as you choose, they fall immeasurably short of those to which the former policy exposes this nation and the world. The path of safety, as of opulence, lies in the forward

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.