July 6, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
15 
(Continued /rom puDe 13) 
^TK^r^if^^u'^,-^^''-^ P"^^ ^""^"^ be^ng run up still higher. 
ihat this behet is well founded gains probability from 
.he fact that, during the year or two previous to the out- 
break ot the war, German int&rests made strenuous efforts 
to buy control of the two or three British factories which 
vvere the only obstacle in their way to the complete 
dominationof the British " K " industry. 
Germany's principal weapon in offensive overseas trade 
operations were cheap goods, and in the manner in which 
these, in conjunction with prices and credits, vvere manipu- 
lated to the interests of herself and the confusion of her 
rivals would require a volume rather than a page to tell 
It in. I can touch upon it but briefly here. 
Long Credits 
First a word as to credits. Unprccedentedly long 
credits— often from six months, to two or three years- 
were inaugurated by Germany When she first embarked 
upon her foreign trade campaign. In the main foreign 
commercial centres— Calcutta, Singapore Shanghai, Syd- 
ney, Capetown, Buenos Aires, and similar points— they 
were generally used more or less fairly, and rarely with- 
out considerable success, partly in developing new Ger- 
man business, partly in demoralising that of rivals. But 
in countries where official corruption was the rule— such 
as China and some of the less progressive South American 
republics— they were made the basis of a form of " commer- 
cial peonage " not unworthy of comparison with the un- 
speakable labour peonage of Mexico and Central America. 
I will outline briefly what I found one German 
trader had accomplished in this line in an important 
Venezuelan distributing centre. The man in question 
was the representative of a heavily capitalised German 
trading concern, with tentacles reaching to many parts 
of the world, but paying particular attention to those 
countries in which official " complaisance " is more or 
less of a purchasable commodity. It was, therefore, most 
active in China, the Malaysian islands, and South and Cen- 
tral America. The operations of the representati\'c 
in Venezuela were typical of what was going on in all its 
other branches in the regions indicated. 
The branch in Caracas was opened up with a large 
assortment of general merchandise that had been found 
to sell readily to the little Venezuelan tiendas or general 
stores. Besides German goods, a great effort had been 
made to secure the agencies of just as many articles from 
other countries — especially the United States, France, 
and England— as a local demand had already been 
established for. Prices were reasonable, for this concern 
depended upon a surer and less costly way of establishing 
its footholds than by " slashing." Credits — almost in- 
definite credits — were the base of the system. 
Trade was welcomed with everybody, but particular 
attention was paid to cultivating relations with those on a 
certain confidential list, the names of which were doubt- 
less obtained from the German Consulate through an 
" annexo " maintained for the furtherance of " patriotic " 
but not necessarily ofticial business. These names, strange- 
ly, were of Venezuelan shop-keepers, large and small, 
who, while doing a good business, were more or less on 
the edge of financial difliculties. To these — to practically 
everyone in fact — the long and easy credits made an 
especial appeal, and when it was pointed out that not only 
would German goods be supplied them on these amazingly 
liberal terms, but that, by trading with the concern in 
question, much longer credit could also be obtained on 
English, American and other foreign goods, as there 
was often an established demand for most of the lines so 
oftercd, friendly relations were established at once. 
The sooner after this consummation that the financial 
troubles of the shop-keeper became acute the better 
[or the plans of the Teutonic wholesaler. Indeed, that 
astute individual often found it convenient to buy up 
quietly any stray claims that his " outside " man could 
track down, and then, through his native lawyer, precipi- 
tate a crisis by having them pressed in court. When the 
first of his own business accounts for goods furnished 
began falling due, the German coolly unmasked and 
delivered his ultimatum. 
" I shall be glad to allow you to go on with your busi- 
ness," he told'the frightened licmUshx, " and to supply 
you with eoods on the same liberal terms as in tb.; past ; 
but hereafter you will have to deal exclusively m goods 
of German manufacture. They are better " than the 
others anyhow. I do not mind carrying for a while the 
debt you now owe me ; only, in the future, I shall have to 
require you to make monthly payments equivalent to 
the value of the goods I ha\e furni.shed to you for that 
period. You must admit that this is a very liberal ar- 
rangement considering the very awkward position you are 
in. Agree to it, and all will go on smoothly so long as 
you make your monthly payments; otherwise" — and 
he extended his palms and shrugged his shdulders in his 
rapidly-acquired Venezuelan manner — " I shall have to 
let the law take its course and foreclose upon you im- 
mediately. " Of course, the ticndista agreed. 
The wholesaler had now arrived at his goal. There- 
after, so long as the shop-keeper carried on at all, he was 
practically bound to the German house, and to German 
goods. The full payment of all of his obligations would, 
of course, have released him, but this eventuality the 
shrewd Teuton always contrived to prevent. That debt 
was the chain by which he held the ticndista in commercial 
bondage, and the master was just as ready with cunningly 
devised expedients to prevent the slave's slipping it off 
as is the patrone of a Costa Rican coffee plantation to see 
that the store-account by which he holds his peons in 
practical life servitude is not allowed to lapse. Indeed, 
no fitter term than " commercial peonage " can be ap- 
plied to this most brazenly ruthless of German foreign 
trade practices. Luckily, in the future it will be con- 
fined to those countries, rapidly decreasing in number, 
where officialdom is open to the facile argument of what 
the Chinese call "squeeze." » 
Of the remarkable methods Germans "pursued in bid- 
ding for foreign contracts, and of how they manipulated 
prices and employed chpap imitations of standard articles 
to displace the latter from a market, I shall endeavoui 
to write at another time. 
Mr. Boyd Gable's New Book 
ONE of the outstanding literary reputations of the 
war is that achieved by Mr. Boyd Cable. His 
first collection of short stories Between the Lines 
was instantly recognised as containing the 
most vivid and intirhate pictures of the actual life of 
soldiers in France and Flanders, and now in his second 
book Action Front (Smith Elder, 5s. net), we have more 
of these wonderful sketches of the daily routine of trench 
warfare. Since the former of these volumes was pub- 
lished, there has been a continuous stream of all sorts 
and kinds of books dealing with the war, and not the 
smallest praise that one can bestow on this writer is that 
his work continues to stand out pre-eminent. 
Mr. Boyd Cable is a born chronicler. He takes for 
the text of each tale a brief extract from a dry official 
despatch {e.g.. The enemy temporarily gained a footing 
in a portion of our trench, but in our counter-attack we 
retook this and a part of enemy trench beyond) ; then he 
lets the incidents as it were tell themselves. iThere 
is no self-conscious artistry about the telling ; event 
follows event easily and naturally ; the dry bones of the 
oflicial despatch are reclothed in flesh and blood, and the 
scene lives in the mind ever after. He allows men to 
express their feelings and you grow aware of the writer's 
sympathies, but they are only the reflection of the 
natural sympathies of healthy men of action. In the 
tale entitled " A Benevolent Neutral," we have a fine 
picture of that type of American which one believes to 
be the truest and best type of citizen of that neutral 
country. " As Others See " is a capital illustration 
how both Briton and Frenchman come through actuality 
of battle to know each other better, and to form a truer 
opinion of their mutual characters. 
The gem of the collection is the pathetic little story 
" \ Fragment." One has heard of the regimental spirit, 
but in these few pages it shines forth with a new and 
inextinguishable glow. In years to come most of these 
short stories will pass into the permanent literature o! 
the country, for we hold that Mr. Boyd Cable and Pro- 
fessor Morgan are the two writers who have given us the 
truest and most exact representations of war as it actually 
is — both the horror and the humour of it, its callousnoss, 
kindness, cruelty and unselfish sacrifice. 
