Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/512

488 It is, therefore, by no means idle talk when I say that when we are once plunged into the vortex of the competition of the Old-World powers for colonial expansion, especially in the Far East, the danger of war—not excluding unnecessary or foolish war—will be constantly near us. And what does that signify? Perpetual unrest and the maintenance of big naval and military armaments imposing immense burdens upon the people—heavier here in proportion than anywhere else, owing to our habitual administrative wastefulness—not to forget a pension-roll without calculable limit—all this producing militarism of the most prodigal kind.

Finally I come to the question of commercial interest. Our annexationists talk as if our commerce and our industries were in terrible distress for outlets; as if we were in imminent danger of suffocation for want of air, and as if nothing but territorial conquest could open markets for our surplus agricultural and industrial products. And this at a time when the bureau of Foreign Commerce of our State Department reports as follows:

The United States is no longer the “granary of the world” merely. Its sales of manufactured goods have continued to extend with a facility and promptitude of results which have excited the serious concern of countries that, for generations, had not only controlled their home markets, but had practically monopolized certain lines of trade in other lands. When we consider that this result has been reached with comparative ease, in spite of added impediments to United States exports, in the form of discriminations of various kinds, and notwithstanding that organized effort to reach foreign markets for our manufacturers is as yet in its infancy, the ability of the United States to compete successfully with the most advanced industrial nations in any part of the world, as well as with those nations in their home markets, can no longer be seriously questioned.