The trade agreements programme has enabled us to expand our foreign trade without subjecting it to) the strait-jacket qf extreme governmental control. Under it our trade has increased far more markedly than that of any other of the commercially important nations, The programme has been devised and carried out as a means of creating conditions in which free enterprise can function most effectively, Reversion to a policy of extreme pro-rections or substitution for the trade agreements programme of a policy under which we would adopt all the instruments of economic warfare that Must all this be repeated again perhaps in an even more acute form after the present war? That may well be the case if we now turn our backs upon the policy which under our leadership has offered in recent years the only hope of promoting trade among nations in such a way as to rebuild the foundations of economic prosperity within nations and of stable peace among nations. Were we to do this we would inflict upon ourselves, upon the world an incalculable injury. After the World War, through the policies which we then pursued, we helped to create a situation in which the entire economic structure of the world rested upon shifting sands with nothing in sight but inescapable disaster. The policy which we have pursued for the last six years, if we only have the wisdom to continue it, will enable us to place the whole weight of our country's Influence behind, a determined effort—in which I am sure, we shall have. ce-operation of other nations—to rebuild international relaticnships in such a way that our nation and all nations can prosper and be at peace."—United Press. have been so disastrously prevalent in the recent past would not only wipe out our recent trade gains, but would impose upon our people a further national loss of staggering proportions. Our Government would be compelled to adopt most costly and difficult means of relief and adjustment and to regiment the country's economic activity. And the most astonishing thing is that courses of action which must inevitably lead to these results are proposed and advocated by the very people who like to regard themselves as the real proponents of free enterprise and nonintervention of Government in economic life.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.