Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 6.djvu/52

28 China trade is worth having, although for a time out of sight the Atlantic Ocean will be an infinitely more important battlefield of commerce than the Pacific, and one European customer is worth more than twenty or thirty Asiatics. But does the trade of China really require that we should have the Philippines and a great display of power to get our share? Read the consular reports, and you will find that in many places in China our trade is rapidly gaining, while in some, British trade is declining, and this while Great Britain had on hand the greatest display of power imaginable and we had none. And in order to increase our trade there, our consuls advise us to improve our commercial methods, saying nothing of the necessity of establishing a base of naval operations, and of our appearing there with war-ships and heavy guns. Trade is developed, not by the biggest guns, but by the best merchants. But why do other nations prepare to fight for the Chinese trade? Other nations have done many foolish things which we have been, and I hope will remain wise enough not to imitate. If it should come to fighting for Chinese customers, the Powers engaged in that fight are not unlikely to find out that they pay too high a price for what can be gained, and that at last the peaceful neutral will have the best bargain. At any rate, to launch into all the embroilments of an imperialistic policy by annexing the Philippines in order to snatch something more of the Chinese trade would be for us the foolishest game of all.

Generally speaking, nothing could be more irrational than all the talk about our losing commercial or other opportunities which “will never come back if we fail to grasp them now.” Why, we are so rapidly growing in all the elements of power ahead of all other nations that not many decades hence, unless we demoralize ourselves by a reckless policy of adventure, not one of them will be able to resist our will if we choose to enforce it. This the