We seem thus to be entering upon an economic competition not entirely
unlike that which existed between Germany and England. We too have
gone over to a policy of extending our foreign markets and of
protecting our foreign investments. More and more we shall be
interested in politically and industrially backward countries, to which
we shall sell and in which we shall invest. Inevitably we shall face
outwards. We shall not be permitted by our own financiers,
manufacturers and merchants, to say nothing of those of Europe, to hold
completely aloof. We have seen, even in the present Mexican crisis,
how American investment tended to precipitate a conflict. We have
learned the same lesson from England, {71} France and Germany. As we
expand both industrially and financially beyond our political borders
we are placed in new, difficult and complicated international
relations, and are forced to determine for ourselves the role that
America must play in this great development. We can no longer stand
aside and do nothing, for that is the worst and most dangerous of
policies. We must either plunge into national competitive imperialism,
with all its profits and dangers, following our financiers wherever
they lead, or must seek out some method by which the economic needs and
desires of rival industrial nations may be compromised and appeased, so
that foreign trade may go on and capital develop backward lands without
the interested nations flying at each other's throat. Isolation,
aloofness, a hermit life among the nations is no longer safe or
possible. Whatever our decision the United States must face the new
problem that presents itself, the problem of the economic expansion of
the industrial nations throughout the world.

[1] This comparison is not exact, since the British statistics include
articles under manufactures which we do not include, and exclude
articles which we include. I cite these figures merely to show that
there is a vast difference in the relative importance to the United
Kingdom and the United States of their export of manufactures, but not
to show exactly what that difference is. Similarly the comparison
above between the total product of American manufacturing and our
export of manufactures is approximate.

[2] See an analysis--let us say of Argentine trade.

[3] On the other hand the very extension of our home market tends to
make us negligent of foreign exports of manufactures and to consider