Page:David Atkins - The Economics of Freedom (1924).pdf/33

 should they be regarded as lending themselves to advantageous fusion, since they are undoubtedly the result of effort and selection within that dominating environment which we call “Country.” There is, however, this common sanctity in what different nations call “Country”—it was at these points in the swirling tides and torrents, that scattered groups of the human family found their foothold and held it by throwing up dikes. While the tearing down of these dikes, urged by the sentimentalist, may contribute a thin thread of color to a historical cross-section, as a flood takes out a rich field and paints the surface of a submerged delta, this tearing down, until all levels are equally raised, would probably destroy the very seed-beds of culture. If we fully realize the price, we are likely to strengthen the dikes; for it is no light price in terms of hard-won human liberty; and it is our sentimentalists who haggle over it with their alternate snatching at self-determination and self-subordination, and with their irrational belief that international peace can be achieved by the compounding of disorder.

Let us have done with our dream of empty international courtesy and economic impudence, such as has recently put Nauru, Southwest Africa, West Samoa, The Marshalls, The Carolines, The Marianas Islands, and that part of New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago formerly held by Germany, within just such discretionary fences as those with which we surround the Philippines, Hawaii and Cuba. If we are determined to cling to our exclusive areas of privilege, or are willing to permit our neighbors to cling to theirs, our dream of international peace is simply a dream of regularizing the economic spoils. It is not yet a dream of unity; but a very practical method of patenting our advantages.

We have a more immediate task. On no higher a basis than that of urgent self-interest, as champions of democracy, we have plain duties toward our fellow-citizens, toward our international neighbors and toward posterity—at any rate toward the delightful advance-guard of posterity with which we come in contact.

Our duty to our fellow-citizens, apart from any benevolent plans for the future, is to keep faith with those who have