Frederic Bastiat ^[1] is often credited with having said something like "If goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will."  Bastiat almost certainly believed these words to be true, but I can find no evidence that Bastiat really did write such a thing.  (I’m happy to be corrected.)

But on page 255 of Jeffry Frieden’s Global Capitalism ^[2] (2006) I find the following: "As one of [FDR's Secretary of State Cordell] Hull’s supporters put it, ‘If soldiers are not to cross international borders, goods must do so.’"

Frieden’s footnote to the above sentence attributes these words to one Otto Maller, and gives a citation to page 37 of Alfred E. Eckes, A Search for Solvency: Bretton Woods and the International Monetary System, 1941-1971 ^[3] (1975).

I can find nothing about this Otto Maller; Googling that name produces a mere five hits, none of which seem to point to the person referred to above.

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