Part 16 (1/2)
To come victorious out of the present ordeal--if, indeed, that be possible with the leaders, principles, methods and strivings that still characterize us--will not suffice to effect the triumph of our cause. The present, momentous though it be, cannot with safety be separated in thought or action from the future. The struggle will go on relentlessly after this campaign until one side has worsted the other definitively. And it is for that struggle that it behoves us to prepare while the war is still at its height.
The Germans, true to their practice, have set us the example. Their curious combinations for dividing the Allies while negotiating their own schemes for reorganizing political Europe have been worked out in almost every detail. Their projects for creating a vast and powerful economic organization, to be known as Central Europe,[144] with its first appendix in the Balkan Peninsula, have been carefully woven, and will be duly embellished when the hour for unfolding them has struck.
In a word, when opportunity suddenly appears like the bridegroom of the Gospel, the German will be found waiting, with girded loins and trimmed lamp. He has distributed the parts of each nation in the international drama, and if the roles cannot be taken over to-morrow, he will wait until the day after.
[144] Cf. Friedrich Naumann, _Mitteleuropa_.
The world is henceforth no longer a field of labour for the individual. Co-operation is the open sesame to the economic life of the future. And co-operation means organization. Organization, then, is the Alpha and Omega of the new era. That is the mysterious radium which has enabled a single race to a.s.sail and hold its own against a group of powers whose territory and population are many times greater than its own. That race has demonstrated the quasi-omnipotence of organized labour, and has thereby itself become almost omnipotent. On the success or failure of its adversaries to create a like force and rise to the same height depends the future of Europe and the British Empire. One of the first corollaries of the new principle is the enlargement of all great units, including political communities.
Germany and Austria, therefore, are bound, if not precisely to coalesce in one whole, at least to co-operate and combine for their common ends against common compet.i.tors, and thus to form the nucleus of that federal state which is, our enemies hope, one day to be commensurate with the continent of Europe.
At present, however satisfactory the military situation may be said to be, the general outlook is far from bright. Our aims are impoverished, our creative energies are clogged by prejudice, our political vision is narrowed by party goals, and the forces inherent in the nation which should be employed in readjusting its life to the new conditions are being frittered away in abortive efforts to neutralize dissolvent ideas that are sapping only those organs of our social and political system which are already vicious or decayed. The waste of the empire's resources has no parallel in history. Supreme confusion marks our internal condition. Our leaders have done nothing to familiarize the nation with the dangers that threaten it, the means by which they should be met, or with the social and political ideas which are destined to shape and sway the new order of things which is already close at hand.
In the absence of constructive leaders it is for the nation itself to make due preparation for the momentous changes in the social and political system of Europe to which the present crisis is but the prelude.
And although much has been spoken and written on the subject since the war began, little permanent work has as yet been done. And there are few signs of a radical change for the better. The confusion and incongruousness that mark the ideas of the reformers, and the hesitancy and conflicting interests of politicians make one dubious of the outcome of the present contest. Almost everything essential would appear to be still lacking to the Allies, and the nature of the coming ”peace period” is not realized, because the war is looked upon as an isolated phenomenon which began in July 1914, and will end when hostilities have ceased. Another belief equally misleading and mischievous is that the Teuton race can be paralysed if not crushed, and that for fifty or sixty years to come no revival of its energies, no recrudescence of its morbid aggressiveness need be apprehended. If we continue to shape our conduct on that a.s.sumption we may find ourselves one day in a Serbonian bog from which there is no rescue.
However stringent the conditions which the Allies may be able to impose on their enemies, there will still remain a keen, strenuous, irrepressible race of at least a hundred and twenty millions, endowed with rare capacities for organization, cohesion, self-sacrifice and perseverance, whom no treaties can bind, no scruples can restrain, no dangers intimidate. At any moment a new invention, a favourable diplomatic combination, would suffice to move them to burst all bounds and resume the military, naval and aerial contest anew.
Even now, while the war is still raging, they are busy with comprehensive plans for the economic struggle which will succeed it.
Nor are they content to weave schemes. They have already begun to carry them out. To mention but a few of the less important enterprises, as symptoms of the German solicitude for detail, there was a numerous gathering of railway representatives, Austrian, Hungarian and German, in August 1915, to consider the means of readjusting the railway service to the conditions which the peace would usher in. Among the projects laid before the meeting and insisted on by various financial inst.i.tutions was the reconstruction on a new basis of the Sleeping Car Company, from which Belgian capital is to be excluded.[145]
[145] _Giornale del lavori pubblici._ Cf. also _Giornale d'Italia_, August 22, 1915.
In Italy many of the German commercial houses are, so to say, hibernating during the war. They merely altered their names and subst.i.tuted well-paid, friendly Italians for Germans, and the feat was achieved. In this way the Kaiser's mercury mines of Abbadia, San Salvatore and Corte Vecchia in Tuscany are being protected, and n.o.body in Italy is under any misapprehension as to what is going on there.
They are nominally in the hands of Swiss.
One of the most successful manoeuvres by which the Germans have already parried the strokes of their rivals in the economic struggle is by crossing the frontiers and carrying on the contest in the enemy's country. It was thus that, when Russia, by way of protecting her own nascent textile industries, levied heavy duties on imports from abroad, the Germans transported their plant and their workmen across the border, built extensive works in Lodz which gradually grew into a prosperous German city and rendered sterling services to the Teuton invader during the present war. They intend to have recourse to the same device as soon as hostilities have ceased. German trade papers announced this to their readers and urged them to communicate with the staff with a view to receiving information respecting ways and means.
One Berlin trade journal--the most widely circulated in the German capital--had recently a great headline ent.i.tled: ”How to keep up German Exportation after the War!” After a preamble enumerating the difficulties that would be thrown in the way of exporters by the Allies, the article went on thus: ”For some years to come the means of extricating ourselves from this cruel predicament will consist in transporting the work of manufacturing or refining our merchandise to a neutral country. We are now in a position to offer information and advice on this head to those German manufacturers who are working for exportation, and we shall endeavour to extend our action in the future. We advise all those manufacturers who are desirous of developing their business in this way to enter into relations with us without delay.”[146]
[146] _Zeitschrift des Handelsvertragsvereins_, March 30, 1915. Cf. also _La Gazette de Lausanne_ and _L'Idea n.a.z.ionale_, December 5, 1915.
The device is simple, and has. .h.i.therto been efficacious. In Switzerland the number of German firms is large and continues to augment. They are branches of German houses, and their aim is to further the interests of these. They mask their intentions by a.s.suming Swiss names and also by obtaining for their employees naturalization papers in the little republic. How, it may be asked, do the Allies propose to thwart these manoeuvres? They probably have not given the matter a moment's serious consideration. A Swiss journal of repute[147] published some time ago a characteristic letter received by a Swiss business man from a German textile manufacturer. One pa.s.sage is worth reproducing: ”The actual situation renders it impossible for us to maintain relations with our former customers.
Hence, it is of the utmost importance for us to be informed respecting the commercial and financial situation with a view to the resumption of our intercourse in a lucrative form after this long interruption.
It is our intention, therefore, to have our products sold through a Swiss branch by Swiss agents.”[148]
[147] _Neue Zurcher Zeitung._
[148] _Neue Zurcher Zeitung_, also _L'Idea n.a.z.ionale_, December 5, 1915.
With their incorrigible disposition to judge others by themselves, the British people fancy that after the war a wave of liberalism will sweep over Germany, demolish the strongholds of militarism there, and reveal a pacific, level-headed nation with whom it may be possible to hold friendly intercourse. This, to my thinking, is also a delusion.
Even if the Kaiser and his environment were dislodged from their places, Germany's ideals, aims and strivings would remain unchanged.
But the Kaiser and his Government are minded to leave nothing to chance. They, too, have their plans, which are simple and comprehensive, and would appear to have escaped the notice of British optimists. And yet they are well worth consideration. The Germans themselves put the matter thus--
The enormous expenditure necessitated by the war will call for special financial legislation of which the keynote will be found in monopolies. Now, the present German Finance Minister, who is a banker by training, intends that the monopolies to be created shall be effected, not by the unaided resources of the State, but by its co-operation with the interested business men and banks. On this basis he is working at monopolies of cigarettes, life insurance and electric power. This complex arrangement is facilitated by the machinery of the banks and their peculiar activity. And here we touch upon one of the main sources whence German organization after the war will draw its vitality. It is on the operations of these financial inst.i.tutions that it behoves us to lay stress. They are so many magnetic centres which attract nearly all the free capital of the country and then employ it as they think fit. And one momentous consequence of this command of money is the possession of almost unrestricted power over industrial enterprises, present and future. For it depends on the banks to extend these and to restrict the output of those in consonance with the economic policy pursued by the State.
Nor should it be forgotten that the power and influence of the banks is not limited by the amount of capital they actually possess. Over and above this they wield all the financial force conferred by the vast amounts deposited with them by customers. This was evidenced in the case of the Banca Commerciale in Italy, which had a working capital of 6,240,000 in the year 1914. Now, of that sum only 25 per cent. was owned by Germans, yet the bank itself and all the industries dependent on it were exploited by the German Board of Directors.[149]
In the Fatherland we observe the same phenomenon. All the German banks together, excepting the hypothecary inst.i.tutions, owned 195,000,000 sterling, about 44 per cent. of which belonged to the eight princ.i.p.al banks of the empire.[150] Possessing only 86,050,000 of their own, they disposed of 259,600,000 belonging to other people.
[149] Giovanni Preziosi, _La Germania alla Conquista d'Italia_, 2d edizione, p. 150.