528 Transactions. 



ported over and above what is required for consumption, to be 

 re-exported in a manufactured form, and "with an increased 

 value making it sufficient to pay for the whole. Unless Ger- 

 many is to obtain much of her supply of food and raw materials 

 in return for services of shipping, or as interest on increasing 

 capital invested abroad, as in the case of England, the amount 

 of manufacturing in Germany will increase far more rapidly 

 than her population, and the export of manufactures more 

 rapidly than the total amount of manufactures. It cannot be 

 many years before the volume of German trade will pass that 

 of England. Germany is rapidly assuming a position of equal 

 dependence with England on imported food and raw material. 

 Probably the addition of twenty millions to her population would 

 produce an equal proportional dependence, and at the present 

 Tate of increase she will acquire this additional population in 

 a little over twenty years. When Germany has reached that 

 stage of like economic condition, if not before, her total trade 

 will greatly exceed that of England, by reason of her much 

 greater population, which will be sufficient to outweigh any 

 advantages which may tend to produce a greater British trade. 

 And with German trade will grow naturally and inevitably 

 the German navy. 



When we reflect now that, although the most conspicuous 

 instance, still Germany is only an example of what is taking 

 place over a great part of Europe, one is inclined to question 

 from this point of view the wisdom on our part of a policy that 

 would tend to throw away these rapidly growing markets in 

 favour of one. In the period 1901-3 we have the following 

 excess of births over deaths per hundred of population in various 

 countries of Europe : Germany, 1-49 ; Austria, 1-25 ; Hun- 

 gary, 1-16; Belgium, 1-13; Holland, 1-55; Italy, 104; Nor- 

 way, 1-50 ; Sweden, 1-08. The smallest of these rates of increase 

 would lead, apart from emigration, to a doubling of the popu- 

 lation in sixty-seven years; and these countries as a whole are 

 already dependent on an excess of imports of food and raw 

 materials. 



People generally in this country do not realise the importance 

 of the growing general European market, because the figures 

 in the Official Year-book are so illusive. We read there, for 

 instance, that in 1905 we imported from Germany goods to the 

 amount of £277,467, and exported to Germany to the amount 

 only of £38,958. This, no doubt, is true ; but the great volume 

 of goods that pass from here to Germany through the English 

 market is ignored. It will be a revelation to many to realise 

 how great this volume is. The estimate of Mr. W. de Haas, 

 Commercial Attache to the Imperial German Consulate-General 



