Art. 8.-GERMAN TRADE AFTER THE WAR.

THE abnormal conditions created by the war have favoured the foreign trade of some countries, and particularly our own, and injured that of others, notably Germany, which for practical purposes has been sealocked and land-locked by hostile States. While German commerce has thus been held in check, there have been placed within the reach of British traders unique opportunities for careful stocktaking and for the consideration of the question how best they might adapt themselves to the post-bellum status and problems. These opportunities may not in all respects have been put to the fullest advantage, yet they have by no means been neglected. Much useful investigatory work has been done by organised effort of many kinds, governmental and private; several schemes of expansion, full of promise, have already come into existence, and others equally hopeful are under discussion; State credit has been sought for and pledged in various ways in the interest of industrial developments and research; the manufacturing interests of the country have become convinced of the disadvantages from which they have suffered from lack of organisation, and steps have been taken to supply the deficiency; and latterly the question of education has received from the Government the attention which it deserves. If, in some of these and other measures, the national faith in mechanism and the common belief that the surest way of solving the problem of national efficiency is to spend money freely-as if efficiency could be bought over the counter like tea or sugar-have received characteristic expression, it cannot be doubted that there has been a genuine awakening to the fact that England no longer stands where she did in industrial and commercial matters, and that so favourable an opportunity as the present one of making a new start may never occur again.

The time cannot now be far distant when the old commercial rivalry between Great Britain and Germany will be resumed, and it may therefore be useful to consider what sort of an antagonist we shall then have to reckon with. This may be done without any attempt to anticipate the precise issue of the war or the political

adjustments which may follow it. There are those who believe that Germany will be easy to beat in the future, since Great Britain has obtained a good lead. I do not believe it for a moment; and I have never met anyone who is conversant with the facts of German industrial life, and does not make the mistake of confusing intuition with knowledge, who thinks differently. On the contrary, it is safe to predict with great confidence that, in the absence of violent political changes, which some observers (of whom I am not one) foresee as a by-product of the war and the Russian revolution combined, Germany will quietly settle down to her old life as soon as peace is declared, and will surprise the world by the rapidity of her recovery. There is truth in the words-in many ways unhappily ambiguous-of that acute German publicist Friedrich Naumann, whose latest work, 'MittelEuropa,' has given us so much food for thought: The war was only the continuation of our ordinary life, with other means but fundamentally with the same ends.'

In spite of all its sins, the German nation remains still (for that is what Naumann means) the best-organised community in the world. How often have German industrialists, as I have talked with them in their great factories, asserted the educational value of their military system, adding always, 'When my men come back from their military service [it was then three years, it is now two], their old places will be ready for them.' So it will be after the war for those fortunate enough to take up the broken threads of their eventful life and seek in work and play oblivion for the memories of a horrible ordeal. For the distinctive mark of German life in every direction is system; and, in industry, system has all the perfection of an instrument of precision. Not only so, but I doubt greatly whether the problem of female employment, complicated there as here by the war, will be allowed to stand in the way of as speedy and complete an adjustment as possible to the new conditions.

It will be interesting to observe how far the discipline of arms which our own gallant men are undergoing in a dozen fields of war will bear out in their after-life the unstinted eulogies bestowed upon military training by German employers. Even a Radical politician like Naumann, whose earlier bias against militarism will probably return as soon as the war is over, is constrained to admit

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that Physically it is certainly true that the military years are of incalculable value for the industrial population; and, from the standpoint of organisation, it is incontestable that the discipline of our "great industry" grows on military soil, both in its virtues and its vices' ('Neu-deutsche Wirtschaftspolitik,' p. 368). I confess to a doubt whether the British workman, when he puts off his uniform and returns to the factory and the workshop, will prove any more docile and show a greater respect for officious authority than in the past; and I find myself hoping at times that he will not. If, however, he comes back with less of the old crude spirit of doing as he likes'-which, after all, is a national trait and not characteristic only of the working classes—and with a truer pride and self-respect, as he assuredly will, he will be a better workman because he will be a better man.

After the war, Germany will have her own special difficulties of recuperation and reconstruction to face; and some of these will not be easily overcome. Like other belligerent countries, she will suffer from the decimation of her best working strength, with the further disadvantage that it will be impossible for a long time to supplement her own labour force by foreign supplies. Hitherto Germany has found it necessary to draw largely upon immigrant labour both for industry and agriculture. The census of December 1910 showed that there were 1,250,000 foreigners resident in Germany, of whom 667,100 came from Austria-Hungary, 137,700 from Russia and Finland, 144,200 from the Netherlands, and 104,200 from Italy. It is impossible to say how many of these aliens were labourers, but the occupation census of June 12, 1907, showed the numbers of foreigners resident in Germany and engaged in the occupations specified to be as follow: