July 6, igi6 
LAND it W A T !£ R 
uue wtnt aneid. it was carried on inon' hn/fni,. f„^ 
r.nrope, and the same rule also applied localLv The 
(>erman trader tried to pnt thn.uRh things in v'„„nan 
<f l'"-"''"^." ^'^^t '^« ^'o»'d not have attemn i 1 
Shanghai and Canton, in Borneo what he w 3 ard v 
have ventured in Singapore, in Asuncion what Wild ha'^ 
given him pause in Kosario or Buenos Aires 
in the outposts he was crude, on the 'main trade 
tJaTTfu^"'- ^"^T '^'' '""^'- ^•^""^'^tion let me sav 
r.t 1 ■V^'^T ""''^^ "^^ °*^"^1 '» the. British Postal 
Censorship Headquarters who, after showing me throiih 
two rooms stacked full of recent German pohticalaSd 
commercial propaganda, exclaimed : " Don't ever tell 
me again that the Teuton is not capable ,,f subtlety." 
Two Types of Trader 
Among the straightaway, open-and-above-board Ger- 
man traders one met many of the blond, blunt, stolid type 
whose single outstanding characteristic was an iniinUe 
capacity for work, men susceptible of appeal only through 
the pocket or the stomach, and, reciprocally, capable of 
approaching others only by the same routes. But where- 
ever a particularly important piece of commercial 
strategy was in course of development, both on the 
tiring line and at headquarters," one would alwavs 
hnd numbers of dark-skinned German Jews— ubiquitous 
little rats of men, with eyes that bored like gimlets and 
mouths that shut like steel traps— who, for sheer insight 
into human nature, beat anything I have seen save be- 
hind the green baize table of the " Three-Car-Monte " 
dealer in a Klondike gambling house. It is not this type 
let me say emphatically, that was responsible for i^ny 
of (rermany's psychological miscalculations — her 
tai lures to weigh the " imponderable." 
The German Jews of Hamburg and Bremen, and their 
satellites on the outer trade routes, knew all the time that 
(Tcrmany was making more by peace than she ever could 
gam by war. They knew that a war might well fail of 
complete success, and that never again could Germany 
enjoy the commercial freedom— with its concomitant of 
commercial " brigandage "—that she had enjoyed in the 
past. They wanted to leave well enough alone, to go on 
with the (to them) eminently satisfactory " plunderbund " 
that was bringing them fabulous riches. at the expense of 
all of their trade rivals. The German Jew worked hard 
against the war, and failed. If conditions are favourable, 
after the war he will have his revenge* on the Kaiser 
and the Prussian militarists who precipitated it ; in the 
meantime, at home and abroad, he is working feverishly 
in the hope that, by hook or by crook, he can take up his 
particular brand of " Made in Germany " activities 
where he was compelled to drop them in August, 1914. 
Let us take a few brief glimpses of what these activities 
were, and how they were carried on. 
13 
Clever Practices 
As I have said, questionable German trade jractices 
were far less in evidence in Europe than further afield, 
and most of those carried on in England have by now 
been pretty thoroughly tinmasked. A single instance 
of this kind will suffice. The German manufacturer 
(one may as well admit), directed as he was from a Govern- 
ment bureau, had rather a broader and more compre- 
hensive economic outlook than the British manufacturer, 
else what I am about to set down, along with many 
similar things, could not have come about. 
A decade or more' ago the production of a certain 
commodity of almost universal use, which I will call 
" K," was very backward in Germany, and as a conse- 
quence great quantities of it had to be imported from 
England, at that time the chief manufacturer of it. The 
British factories turned it at a cost which enabled them 
to sell it in England at a fair profit for about £20 a ton, 
and in Germany for a trifle more. German industrial 
economists, who had already grasped the highly import- 
ant truth that manufacture on a large scale greatly 
decreases unit cost of production, deliberately decided 
that, since the necessary raw materials vvere easv to hand, 
the fabrication of " K " should be made a dominant 
industry of their country. Obtaining meticulously de- 
tailed figures on the consumption of " K " in the principal 
countries of Europe- the distant overseas markets were , 
not of great importance on account of high ocean freights 
for so bulky a product— a heavilv capitalised company 
was formed and plans drawn up for factories capable of a 
ma.ximum output of the commodity in question 20 per 
cc7it. greater than the total amount being used in all of Europe 
at that time. This, bear in mind, with a commodity of 
which Germany was at that juncture a heavy importer. 
If any one has ever doubted (aTnianys commercial 
daring, just let him consider for a moment what this signi- 
fied. Germany, starting behind the mark— with actually 
insufficient for her own needs— deliberately lays a plan, 
not only for satisfying those domestic needs, not only 
for supplying the whole present demand of Europe, but 
even anticipating a 20 per cent, greater than the highest 
that could have been hoped for with all outside com- 
petition eliminated. It took men of astonishing audacity 
even to adumbrate such a conception ; it took more than 
that— indeed, most of those things which Herr Heffernich 
claimed for German industrial organisation— to make 
it a jait accompli, for an accomplished fact the grandiose 
dream was destined to become. 
Cheap and convenient raw materials, as well as the fact 
that there was ready domestic demand for the by-products 
of the manufacture of " K," greatly aided the scheme. 
Within a year of the opening of the first factories, Ger- 
many was not only independent of the importation of 
" K," but the reduced price at which it was being sup- 
plied created an internal demand that doubled and 
trebled within a short time. The moment the supply 
overtook the accelerated home demand, the already 
carefully-prepared-for foreign " offensive " was launched. 
What happened in England is typical of what befell in 
other European countries, save that England, having 
been an exporter of " K," was considerably harder hit. 
Capturing the English Market 
The " assault " on the English market took the form 
of an apparently unlimited supply of " K " at £15, and 
even less, per ton, and as this was several poundsbelow 
the cost to the British factories, there could have been 
only one result. The canny public bought more of the 
foreign product than they ever had of the domestic, and 
blessed the benevolent Germans for reducing the cost 
of living. The British factories meanwhile, suddenly 
cut off from both foreign and domestic markets, were 
left in a precisely similar position to the army cut off 
from its supplies, and with precisely similar results — 
they began to enter upon a period of slow starvation. 
The only form of " counter-assault " that would have 
been efficacious, the one, indeed, all British industry 
must be prepared to make in meeting Teutonic com- 
petition after the war — organisation upon German lines — 
the English manufacturers of " K " did not have the 
initiative to make. One after another factories were 
closed down, and at the end of a couple of years, of a 
once rich and extensive British industry, there remained 
but two or three small concerns that were eking out 
a precarious existence through the fact that a few British 
buyers, either through patriotism or discrimination on 
the score of quahty, still insisted on having the home- 
made article regardless of price. 
With the British " K " industry in ruins, it only re- 
mained for the victorious Germans to advance and garner 
the fruits of their victory. I use the term " advance " 
literally. There was an advance, an advance in the 
price of " K." Slowly but steadily that price was forced 
up until it exceeded the former price at which. the British 
manufacturers had sold " K " by more than 1*e Germans 
had cut under that price in the shock of their initial 
assault. The hoodwinked consumer protested and called 
loudly on British industry to come to his rescue, but the 
bankrupt proprietors of the closed down factories pointed 
out that, even if they could obtain the capital to resume, 
they would be just as much at the mercy of the " in- 
vading Hun" as before. The several British factories 
which had managed to carry on gained considerable acces- 
sion of business as the price of " K " went up ; indeed, 
they are credited with having been the sole factor 
{Continued on page Ij) 
