Page:The New Protectionism.djvu/28

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THE NEW PROTECTIONISM

tion for business, either abroad or at home, is usually far keener and more continuous between different British firms or different German and American firms among themselves than it is between a British firm and a German or an American firm. The second falsehood is the misrepresentation of such commercial competition as a struggle between two nations for a limited amount of profitable foreign market, which the one gains and the other loses. There is no such absolute limit to the quantity of foreign market. The notion that the expansion of foreign markets obtained within the last two decades by German or American traders is a corresponding loss of markets to British traders is sheer nonsense. To a large extent those markets were "created" by the special economic and commercial activities of the German or American trader. For the rest, an enlargement of our foreign markets which, in default of German or American competition, might have taken place, would have involved a diminution of our home