Land & Water 
August I, 191 8 
Herzog, the Trade Bernhardi 
HOW GERMANY INTENDS TO APPLY FRIGHTFULNESS TO BUSINESS 
By Ralph W. Page 
the American Government, broui;/it to America, arid will som be published. 
UNDFR the linimless till.' : • riielniturc of German 
liuhi^tries," bv S. Herzog. the full scheme of 
iiuiiistrial frightfuhiess lias been outlined for 
Gei man trade leaders. The book gives the details 
of the vague phrases with which German statesnien 
clothe their intentions. For instance, when Herr Helfferich, 
the head of the Imperial Treasury, says: "We meet the 
plan of exclusion with the demand for the 'open door and 
free seas • and the threat of a blockade of raw materials 
with the' demand for the delivery of raw materials "-this 
does not sound very mena- 
cing. But what the 
demand for the deliver\- 
of raw material reall\- 
means to- the German 
mind is as menacing as 
military conquest. Let us 
take an example : 
Under the plan outlined 
by Herr Herzog's book, if 
you have the good fortune 
to own a copper mine in the 
North, your personal in- 
terest in German trade 
would be awakened some 
bright morning when you 
were ruminating upon the 
blessings of a returned 
peace and era of good 
feeling, by a perempton,- 
rap on the screen door. 
You would arise to greet 
a Prussian officer. But 
unless he neglected his in- 
structions you would be 
ingratiated and delighted. 
For he would be as polite 
as an overdrawn depositor. 
would be dressed exacth" 
in the latest style of Man- 
chester, and would talk in 
the prevailing dialect of 
your town, including the 
current slang. If you retained any vestige of your provincial 
prejudice and hatred of the German, he would overlook it 
in the interests of Kultur. 
What he would say you would recognise to be for your 
own good. He would merely intinjate that the first month's 
output of your mine should be an average month's output ; 
that it should be consigned to Germany and that you would 
be paid for it immediately an eminently fair price determined 
by the commercial federation of Germany. Incidentally you 
might rest assured that nobody else would be profiteering 
upon this product to the detriment of progress and the 
freedom of the seas, because the freight tare to the coast, 
the export premium, and the ship charges would all have 
been equitably arranged by the same federation. 
Well, I can hear you say, that is all nonsense, because I 
and every other allied national would die fighting in our tracks 
before we would put up with any such order. That is the 
very point. That is precisely why we are fighting. But it 
is of the utmost importance that we know it in time. You 
can meet that particular proposition with the bayonet. But 
if vou were a druggist, perhaps you could not rest so com- 
placently behind the big guns. 
Not to be too technical, we will merely assume that there 
is a certain chemical compound that you need in your busi- 
ness, and that you discover that the only place you can buy 
it and compete in the trade is from Germany. So, being 
driven to it — as the Russians were driven to obtaining 
their ana:sthetics from the same source — you order your 
minimum needs from the eminently neutral firm estab- 
Bernhardi notified us with brutal frankness and in exhaustive 
detail precisely ifhat Germany intended to do irith her "incom- 
parable armv" and just how she proposed to do it. ■ We read 
and smiled, and thre'cv it aside as the vaporins^s of a -war-mad 
lunatic. 
Now another warning, no less frightful and even more 
detailed, has fallen into our hands— nothing less- than the 
complete German plans for the conquest of the trade of the 
world after the war. This amazing plot reveals the full sinister 
significance of the vague phrases so stubbornly reiterated by 
the War Lords demanding the "open door" and "Delivery 
of Raw Materials." It strips naked the -whole campaign, 
disclosing an onslaught upon Allied commerce no whit less 
minutely prepared, and no less ruthless in purpose and methods 
of conduction than the blood-thirsty devastation of civilisation 
bv the sword, foretold by Bernhardi and fulfilled in Loiivain. 
A single copy of this report exists in America. It -was 
obtained from Germany by the United States Government since 
we went to war. Its acquisition and safe transmission to 
Washington is not the least of the accomplishments to the credit 
of the American Secret Service. It is the handivriting on the 
■wall. This time we shall not be found unready. It is of the 
most vital interest to every man of business and patriot in the 
Allied countries. For it is the only guide to the enveloping 
manoeuvres of the ineiniable invasion. 
lished to cloak jour feelings of enmity, situated around 
the corner. ,■ . r 
But there you will be presented with a long list of every 
kind of instrument and device, medic inc. and trinket earned 
in vour entire sYock which is manufactured beyond the 
Rhine and told that you will purchase a definite amount of 
each of them at the s'ame time you i)lace your otlier order. 
You will also be pleased to find that they have already 
compiled for vou the exact quantitx' of everything you buy 
(hiring the year, and the jiroportioii vou are morally bound 
to obtain from the Father- 
land. 
'"Stuff," you say; "there 
will be no such indis- 
pensable article made in 
Germany. We know they 
intend to hold us up with 
})otash and dyes and other 
bugaboos. But we arc pre- 
pared or preparing to meet 
this performance, and will 
have all 6f themasgood and 
as cheap as the Germans." 
This assumption is the 
most dangerous we can 
indulge in. It simply spells 
inevitable ruin. It is the 
very epitome of the mere- 
tricious optimism of the 
amateur in war who under- 
rates the power of his 
adversary. 
This book of Herzog's 
flatly states that the Ger- 
mans contemplate a com- 
mercial battle for final 
world supremacy, "fought 
out," as our author bluntly 
'states, "according to the 
approved German fashion 
on foreign soil." Their will 
to dominate, which re- 
gards devastation, looting, 
outrage, extortion, summary executions, and deportations 
as legitimate in military combat, plans precisely parallel 
weapons and practices — embargoes, rebates, dumping, boy- 
cotts, espionage, enslavement of labour, etc., in the forth- 
coming "economic conquest." That is made abundantly 
clear. But more to the point, it shows how the German 
genius for patient painstaking preparation and attention 
to every det,ail, of exhaustive organisation and complete 
national mobilisation has been brought to bear upon the 
problem. It has to be met. 
Before examining the details of this export hold-up, it is 
worth while to see just how we are to be compelled to provide 
all that Herr Herzog demands for the Kaiser's export 
offensive. 
Treaties to be Written in Blood 
Admitting blandly that "the par value of treaties has 
reached nil and will not. immediately recover from its slump," 
and that "to reckon in future upon the security of treaties, 
to build up their loyal observance, would be more than 
improvident," the report still relies u])on them as the founda- 
tion of the import trade, stating in characteristic fashion 
that " the future commercial treaties will be written in blood." 
Among other things that these compacts, to be dictated 
on the battle-field, are to stipulate, with regard to the pro- 
ducts of the .\Ilied countries are : 
"An unlimited opportunity to acquire the sites needed 
for winning the raw materials in question, and an unlimited 
