. . * * • Unduly high and superfluous tariffs
are, however, by no means the only mischief. There is the nuisance of passports and the excessive officiousness of the police who dog the footsteps of the envoys of trade as much as those of the ordinary tourist. Some of the new nations are the worst offenders. They declare that they want help, yet they repel it when it comes in tentative ways. Thus,- they express their new sense of nationality. Yet we must not seem unfairly to claim the document as deliberately a Free Trade manifesto. The phrase " Free Trade " is not used, though the manifesto seems to us logically and even necessarily to point in that direction. The signatories are content rather to insist upon the truth that trade is not war. The truism needs constant repetition, for there are still many people who persuade themselves that if their neighbour is prosperous he_ is prosperous at their expense. It never occurs to them that much the most important fact is that his prosperity. makes him a larger buyer of everybody else's goods.
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