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BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL
Are we Told the Truth?
by
WILLIAM LE QUEUX
Author of "German Spies in England"
London
Stanley Paul & Co
31 Essex Street, Strand, W.C.
First published in 1915
Copyright in the United States of America by
William Le Queux, 1915
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
PAGE
The Unknown To-morrow 7
CHAPTER I
The Peril of "Muddling Through" 13
CHAPTER II
The Peril of Exploiting the Poor 31
CHAPTER III
The Peril of not Doing Enough 49
CHAPTER IV
The Peril of the Censorship 66
CHAPTER V
The Peril of the Press Bureau 81
CHAPTER VI
The Peril of the Enemy Alien 96
CHAPTER VII
The Peril of Deluding the Public 119
CHAPTER VIII
The Peril of Invasion 139
CHAPTER IX
The Peril of Apathy 148
CHAPTER X
The Peril of Stifling the Truth 160
CHAPTER XI
Facts to Remember 171
FOREWORD
THE UNKNOWN TO-MORROW
The following pages--written partly as a sequel to my book "German
Spies in England," which has met with such wide popular favour--are,
I desire to assure the reader, inspired solely by a stern spirit of
patriotism.
This is not a book of "scaremongerings," but of plain, hard,
indisputable facts.
It is a demand for the truth to be told, and a warning that, by the
present policy of secrecy and shuffle, a distinct feeling of distrust
has been aroused, and is growing more and more apparent. No sane man
will, of course, ask for any facts concerning the country's resources
or its intentions, or indeed any information upon a single point which,
in the remotest way, could be of any advantage to the barbaric hordes
who are ready to sweep upon us.
But what the British people to-day demand is a sound and definite
pronouncement which will take them, to a certain extent, into the
confidence of the Government--as apart from the War Office, against
which no single word of criticism should be raised--and at the same
time deal effectively with certain matters which, being little short of
public scandals, have irritated and inflamed public opinion at an hour
when every man in our Empire should put forth his whole strength for
his God, his King, and his country.
Germany is facing the present situation with a sound, businesslike
policy, without any vacillation, or any attempt to shift responsibility
from one Department of the State to another. Are we doing the same?
What rule or method can be discerned, for example, in a system which
allows news to appear in the papers in Scotland which is suppressed in
the newspapers in England? Why, indeed, should one paper in England be
permitted to print facts, and another, published half a mile away, be
debarred from printing the self-same words?
The public--who, since August 4th last, are no longer school-children
under the Head-Mastership of the Prime-Minister-for-the-Time-Being--are
now wondering what all this curious censorship means, and for what
reason such an unreliable institution--an institution not without its
own scandals, and employing a thousand persons of varying ideas and
warped notions--should have been established. They can quite understand
the urgent necessity of preventing a horde of war correspondents, at
the front, sending home all sorts of details regarding our movements
and intentions, but they cannot understand why a Government offer of
£100 reward, published on placards all over Scotland for information
regarding secret bases of petrol, should be forbidden to be even
mentioned in England.
They cannot understand why the Admiralty should issue a notice warning
the public that German spies, posing as British officers, are visiting
Government factories while at the same time the Under-Secretary for
War declares that all enemy aliens are known, and are constantly
under police surveillance. They cannot understand either why, in
face of the great imports of foodstuffs, and the patriotic movement
on the part of Canada and our Overseas Dominions concerning our wheat
supply, prices should have been allowed to increase so alarmingly, and
unscrupulous merchants should be permitted to exploit the poor as they
have done. They are mystified by the shifty shuttlecock policy which
is being pursued towards the question of enemy aliens, and the marked
disinclination of the authorities to make even the most superficial
inquiry regarding cases of suspected espionage, notwithstanding the
fact that German spies have actually been recognised among us by
refugees from Antwerp and other Belgian cities.
The truth, which cannot be disguised, is that by the Government's
present policy, and the amusing vagaries of its Press Censorship, the
public are daily growing more and more apathetic concerning the war.
While, on the one hand, we see recruiting appeals in all the clever
guises of smart modern advertising, yet on the other, by the action of
the authorities themselves, the man-in-the-street is being soothed into
the belief that all goes well, and that, in consequence, no more men
are needed and nobody need worry further.
We are told by many newspapers that Germany is at the end of her
tether: that food supplies are fast giving out, that she has lost
millions of men, that her people are frantic, that a "Stop the War"
party has already arisen in Berlin, and that the offensive on the
eastern frontier is broken. At home, the authorities would have
us believe that there is no possibility of invasion, that German
submarines are "pirates"--poor consolation indeed--that all alien
enemies are really a deserving hardworking class of dear good people,
and that there is no spy-peril. A year ago the British public would,
perhaps, have believed all this. To-day they refuse to do so. Why
they do not, I have here attempted to set out; I have tried to reveal
something of the perils which beset our nation, and to urge the reader
to pause and reflect for himself. Every word I have written in this
book, though I have been fearless and unsparing in my criticism, has
been written with an honest and patriotic intention, for I feel that it
is my duty, as an Englishman, in these days of national peril to take
up my pen--without political bias--solely for the public good.
I ask the reader to inquire for himself, to ascertain how cleverly
Germany has hoodwinked us, and to fix the blame upon those who
wilfully, and for political reasons, closed their eyes to the truth. I
would ask the reader to remember the formation in Germany--under the
guidance of the Kaiser--of the Society for the Promotion of Better
Relations between Germany and England, and how the Kaiser appointed,
as president, a certain Herr von Holleben. I would further ask the
reader to remember my modest effort to dispel the pretty illusion
placed before the British public by exposing, in _The Daily Telegraph_,
in March 1912, the fact that this very Herr von Holleben, posing as a
champion of peace, was actually the secret emissary sent by the Kaiser
to the United States in 1910, with orders to make an anti-English press
propaganda in that country! And a week after my exposure the Emperor
was compelled to dismiss him from his post.
Too long has dust been thrown in our eyes, both abroad and at home.
Let every Briton fighting for his country, and working for his
country's good, remember that even though there be a political
truce to-day, yet the Day of Awakening must dawn sooner or later.
On that day, with the conscience of the country fully stirred, the
harmless--but to-day powerless--voter will have something bitter and
poignant to say when he pays the bill. He will then recollect some hard
facts, and ask himself many plain questions. He will put to himself
calmly the problem whether the present German hatred of England is
not mainly due to the weak shuffling sentimentalism and opportunism
of Germanophils in high places. And he will then search out Britain's
betrayers, and place them in the pillory.
Assuredly, when the time comes, all these things--and many more--will
be remembered. And the dawn of the Unknown To-morrow will, I feel
assured, bring with it many astounding and drastic changes.
William Le Queux.
Devonshire Club, S.W.
_April 1915._
BRITAIN'S DEADLY PERIL
CHAPTER I
THE PERIL OF "MUDDLING THROUGH"
Has Britain, in the course of her long history, ever been prepared for
a great war? I do not believe she has; she certainly was not ready last
August, when the Kaiser launched his thunderbolt upon the world.
Perhaps, paradoxical as it may seem, this perpetual unreadiness may be,
in a sense, part of Britain's strength.
We are a people slow of speech, and slow to anger. It takes much--very
much--to rouse the British nation to put forth its full strength.
"Beware of the wrath of the man slow to anger" is a useful working
maxim, and it may be that the difficulty of arousing England is, in
some degree, a measure of her terrible power once she is awakened.
Twice or thrice, at least, within living memory we have been caught
all unready when a great crisis burst upon us--in the Crimea, in South
Africa, and now in the greatest world-conflict ever seen. Hitherto,
thanks to the amazing genius for improvisation which is characteristic
of our race, we have "muddled through" somehow, often sorely smitten,
sorely checked, but roused by reverses to further and greater efforts.
The bulldog tenacity that has ever been our salvation has been aroused
in time, and we have passed successfully through ordeals which might
have broken the spirit and crushed the resistance of nations whose
mental and physical fibre was less high and less enduring.
We have "muddled through" in the past: shall we "muddle through" again?
It is the merest truism--patent to all the world--that when Germany
declared war, we were quite unready for a contest. For years the nation
had turned a deaf ear to all warnings. The noble efforts of the late
Lord Roberts, who gave the last years of his illustrious life--despite
disappointments, and the rebuffs of people in high places who ought
to have known--nay, who did know--that his words were literally true,
passed unheeded.
Lord Roberts, the greatest soldier of the Victorian era, a man wise in
war, and of the most transcendent sincerity, was snubbed and almost
insulted, inside and outside the House of Commons, by a parcel of
upstarts who, in knowledge and experience of the world and of the
subject, were not fit to black his boots. "An alarmist and scaremonger"
was perhaps the least offensive name that these worthies could find for
him: and it was plainly hinted that he was an old man in his dotage.
Lulled into an unshakable complacency by the smooth assurances of
placeholders in comfortable jobs, the nation remained serenely asleep,
and never was a country less ready for the storm that burst upon us
last August. I had, in my writings--"The Invasion of England" and other
works--also endeavoured to awaken the public; but if they would not
listen to "Bobs," it was hardly surprising that they jeered at me.
I am speaking of the nation as a whole. To their eternal honour let it
be said that there were nevertheless some who, for years, had foreseen
the danger, and had done what lay in their power to meet it. Foremost
among these we must place Mr. Winston Churchill, and the group of
brilliant officers who are now the chiefs of the British Army on the
Continent. To them, at least, I hope history will do full justice.
It was no mere coincidence that just before the outbreak of war our
great fleet--the mightiest Armada that the world has ever seen--was
assembled at Spithead, ready, to the last shell and the last man, for
any eventuality.
It was no mere coincidence that the magnificent First Division at
Aldershot, trained to the minute by men who knew their business, were
engaged when war broke out in singularly appropriate "mobilisation
exercises." All honour to the men who foresaw the world-peril, and did
their utmost to make our pitiably insufficient forces ready, as far as
fitness and organisation could make them ready, for the great Day when
their courage and endurance were to be so severely tested.
But when all this is said and admitted, it is clear that our safety,
in the early days of the war, hung by a hair. Afloat, of course, we
were more than a match for anything Germany could do, and our Fleet
has locked our enemy in with a strangling grip that we hope is slowly
choking out her industrial and commercial life. Ashore, however, our
position was perilous in the extreme. Men's hair whitened visibly
during those awful days when the tiny British Army, fighting heroically
every step of the way against overwhelming odds, was driven ever back
and back until, on the banks of the Marne, it suddenly turned at bay
and, by sheer matchless valour, hurled the legions of the Kaiser back
to ruin and defeat. The retreat was stayed, the enemy was checked and
driven back, but the margin by which disaster was averted and turned
into triumph was so narrow that nothing but the most superb heroism on
the part of our gallant lads could have saved the situation. We had
neglected all warnings, and we narrowly escaped paying an appalling
price in the destruction of the flower of the British Army. With
insufficient forces, we had again "muddled through" by the dogged
valour of the British private.
To-day we are engaged in "muddling through" on a scale unexampled in
our history. The Government have taken power to raise the British
Army to a total of three million men. In our leisurely way we have
begun to make new armies in the face of an enemy who for fifty years
has been training every man to arms, in the face of an enemy who for
ten or fifteen years at least has been steadily, openly, and avowedly
preparing for the Day when he could venture, with some prospect of
success, to challenge the sea supremacy by which we live, and move, and
have our being, and lay our great Empire in the dust.
We neglected all warnings; we calmly ignored our enemy's avowed
intentions; we closed our eyes and jeered at all those who told the
truth; we deliberately, and of choice, elected to wait until war was
upon us to begin our usual process of "muddling through." Truly we
are an amazing people! Yet we should remember that the days when one
Englishman was better than ten foreigners have passed for ever.
Naturally, our preference for waiting till the battle opened before
we began to train for the fight led us into some of the most amazing
muddles that even our military history can boast of. When the tocsin of
war rang out, our young men poured to the colours from every town and
village in the country. Everybody but the War Office expected it. The
natural result followed: recruiting offices were simply "snowed under"
with men, and for weeks we saw the most amazing chaos. The flood of
men could neither be equipped nor housed, nor trained, and confusion
reigned supreme. We had an endless series of scandals at camps, into
which I do not propose to enter: probably, with all the goodwill in
the world, they were unavoidable. Still the flood of men poured in.
The War Office grew desperate. It was, clearly, beyond the capacity
of the organisation to handle the mass of recruits, and then the War
Office committed perhaps its greatest blunder. Unable to accept more
men, it raised the physical standard for recruits. No one seems to have
conceived the idea that it would have been better to take the names
of the men and call them up as they were needed. Naturally the public
seized upon the idea that enough men had been obtained, and there was
an instant slump in recruiting which, despite the most strenuous of
advertising campaigns--carried out on the methods of a vendor of patent
medicines--has, unfortunately, not yet been overcome.
Following, came a period of unexampled chaos at the training-centres.
Badly lodged, badly fed, clothed in ragged odds and ends of "uniforms,"
without rifles or bayonets, it is simply a marvel that the men stuck
to their duty, and it is surely a glowing testimony to their genuine
patriotism. I do not wish to rake up old scandals, and I am not going
to indulge in carping criticism of the authorities because they were
not able to handle matters with absolute smoothness when, each week,
they were getting very nearly a year's normal supply of recruits.
Confusion and chaos were bound to be, and I think the men--on the
whole--realised the difficulties, and made the best of a very trying
situation. But they were Britons! My object is simply to show how
serious was our peril through our unpreparedness. If our enemy, in that
time of preparation, could have struck a blow directly at us, we must,
inevitably, have gone under in utter ruin. Happily, our star was in the
ascendant. The magnificent heroism of Belgium, the noble recovery of
the French nation after their first disastrous surprise, the unexampled
valour of our Army, and the silent pressure of the Navy, saved us from
the peril that encompassed us. Once again we had "muddled through"
perhaps the worst part of our task.
No one can yet say that we are safe. This war is very far indeed from
being won, for there is yet much to do, and many grave perils still
threaten us. It is, perhaps, small consolation to know that most of
the perils we brought upon ourselves by our persistent and foolish
refusal to face plain and obvious facts: by our toleration of so-called
statesmen who, fascinated by the Kaiser's glib talk, came very near
to betraying England by their refusal to tell the country the truth,
or even, without telling the country, to make adequate preparations
to meet a danger which had been foreseen by every Chancellory in
Europe for years past. It can never be said that we were not warned,
plainly and unmistakably. The report of the amazing speech of the
Kaiser, which I have recorded elsewhere, I placed in the hands of the
British Secret Service as early as 1908, and the fact that it had been
delivered was soon abundantly verified by confidential inquiries in
official circles in Berlin. Yet, with the knowledge of that speech
before them, Ministers could still be found to assure us that Germany
was our firm and devoted friend!
The Kaiser, in the course of the secret speech in question, openly
outlined his policy and said:
"Our plans have been most carefully laid and prepared by our General
Staff. Preparations have been made to convey at a word a German army
of invasion of a strength able to cope with any and all the troops
that Great Britain can muster against us. It is too early yet to fix
the exact date when the blow shall be struck, but I will say this:
that we shall strike as soon as I have a sufficiently large fleet
of Zeppelins at my disposal. I have given orders for the hurried
construction of more airships of the improved Zeppelin type, and when
these are ready we shall destroy England's North Sea, Channel, and
Atlantic fleets, after which nothing on earth can prevent the landing
of our army on British soil and its triumphal march to London.
"You will desire to know how the outbreak of hostilities will be
brought about. I can assure you on this point. Certainly we shall
not have to go far to find a just cause for war. My army of spies,
scattered over Great Britain and France, as it is over North and South
America, as well as all the other parts of the world where German
interests may come to a clash with a foreign Power, will take good
care of that. I have issued already some time since secret orders that
will at the proper moment accomplish what we desire.
"I shall not rest and be satisfied until all the countries and
territories that once were German, or where greater numbers of my
former subjects now live, have become a part of the great mother
country, acknowledging me as their supreme lord in war and peace.
Even now I rule supreme in the United States, where almost one-half
of the population is either of German birth or of German descent, and
where three million German voters do my bidding at the Presidential
elections. No American Administration could remain in power against
the will of the German voters, who ... control the destinies of the
vast Republic beyond the sea.
"I have secured a strong foothold for Germany in the Near East, and
when the Turkish 'pilaf' pie will be partitioned, Asia Minor, Syria,
and Palestine--in short, the overland route to India--will become our
property. But to obtain this we must first crush England and France."
And, in the face of those words, we still went on money-grubbing and
pleasure-seeking!
If ever the British Empire, following other great Empires of the past,
plunges downward to rack and ruin, we may rest assured that the reason
will be our reliance on our ancient and stereotyped policy of "muddling
through."
I am glad to think that in the conduct of the present campaign we have
been spared those scandals of the baser type which, in the past, have
been such an unsavoury feature of almost every great war in which
we have been engaged. Minor instances of fraud and peculation, of
supplying doubtful food, etc., have no doubt occurred. Human nature
being what it is, it could hardly be expected that we could raise,
train, equip, and supply an army numbered by millions without some
unscrupulous and unpatriotic individuals seizing the opportunity to
line their pockets by unlawful means. We hear occasional stories of
huts unfit for human habitation, of food in camp hardly fit for human
consumption. On the whole, however, it is cordially agreed--and it is
only fair to say--that there has been an entire absence of the shocking
scandals of the type which revolted the nation during the Crimean
campaign. Much has been said about the War Office arrangement with Mr.
Meyer for the purchase of timber. But the main allegation, even in
this case, is that the War Office made an exceedingly bad and foolish
bargain, and Mr. Meyer an exceedingly good one. Indeed it is not even
suggested that the transaction involved anything in the nature of
fraud. It seems rather to be a plea that the purely commercial side of
war would be infinitely better conducted by committees of able business
men than by permanent officials of the War Office, who are, after all,
not very commercial.
Undoubtedly this is true. We should be spared a good deal of the
muddling and waste involved in our wars if, on the outbreak of
hostilities, the War Office promptly asked the leading business men
of the community to form committees and take over and manage for the
benefit of the nation the purely commercial branches of the work. Yet I
suppose, under our system of government, such an obvious common-sense
procedure as this could hardly be hoped for. We continue to leave vast
commercial undertakings in the hands of the men who are not bred in
business, with the result that money is wasted by millions, and so are
lucky if we are not swindled on a gigantic scale by the unscrupulous
contractors. It is usually in an army's food and clothing that scandals
of this nature are revealed, and it is only just to the War Office to
say that in this campaign, for once, food has been good and clothing
fair.
Most of our muddling, so far, has been of a nature tending to prolong
the duration of the war. Our persistent policy of unreadiness has
simply meant that for four, five, or six long months we have not been
ready to take the field with the forces imperatively necessary if the
Germans are to be hurled, neck and crop, out of Belgium and France
across the Rhine, and their country finally occupied and subjugated.
Already another new and graver peril is threatening us--the peril
of a premature and inconclusive peace. Already the voice of the
pacifist--that strangely constituted being to whom the person of the
enemy is always sacred--is being heard in the land. We heard it in the
Boer War from the writers and speakers paid by Germany. Already the
plea is going up that Germany must not be "crushed"--that Germany,
who has made Belgium a howling wilderness, who has massacred men,
women, and even little children, in sheer cold-blooded lust, shall be
treated with the mild consideration we extend to a brave and honourable
opponent. Sure it is, therefore, that if Britain retires from this
war with her avowed purpose unfulfilled, we shall have been guilty of
muddling compared with which the worst we have ever done in the past
will be the merest triviality.
If this war has proved one thing more clearly than another, it
has proved that the German is utterly and absolutely unfit to
exercise power, that he is restrained by no moral consideration from
perpetuating the most shocking abominations in pursuit of his aims,
that the most sacred obligations are as dust in the balance when they
conflict with his supposed interests. It has proved too, beyond the
shadow of a doubt, that England is the real object of Germany's foaming
hate. We are the enemy! France and Russia are merely incidental foes.
It is England that stands between Germany and the realisation of
her insane dream of world dominion, and unless Great Britain to-day
completes, with British thoroughness, the task to which she has set
her hand, this generation, and the generations that are to come, will
never be freed from the blighting shadow of Teutonic megalomania. It is
quite conceivable that a peace which would be satisfactory to Russia
and France would be profoundly unsatisfactory to us. Happily, the
Allies are solemnly bound to make peace jointly or not at all, and I
trust there will be no wavering on this point. For us there is but one
line of safety: the Germanic power for mischief must be finally and
irretrievably broken before Britain consents to sheathe the sword.
Against the prosecution of the war to its final and crushing end, the
bleating pacifists are already beginning to raise their puny voices. I
am not going to give these gentlemen the free advertisement that their
hearts delight in by mentioning them by name: it is not my desire to
assist, in the slightest degree, their pestilential activity. They
form one of those insignificant minorities who are inherently and
essentially unpatriotic. Their own country is invariably wrong, and
other countries are invariably right. To-day they are bleating, in
the few unimportant journals willing to publish their extraordinary
views, that Germany ought to be spared the vengeance called for by her
shameful neglect of all the laws of God and man.
Is there a reader of these lines who will heed them? Surely not.
Burke said it was impossible to draw up an indictment against a
nation: Germany has given him the lie. Our pro-German apologists and
pacifists are fond of laying the blame of every German atrocity, upon
the shoulders of that mysterious individual--the "Prussian militarist."
I reply--and my words are borne out by official evidence published in
my recent book "German Atrocities"--that the most shameful and brutal
deeds of the German Army, which, be it remembered, is the German people
in arms, are cordially approved by the mass of that degenerate nation.
The appalling record of German crime in Belgium, the entire policy of
"frightfulness" by land and sea, the murder of women and children at
Scarborough, the sack of Aerschot and of Louvain, the massacre of seven
hundred men, women, and children in Dinant, the piratical exploits of
the German submarines, are all hailed throughout Germany with shrieks
of hysterical glee. And why? Because it is recognised that, in the long
run and in the ultimate aim, they are a part and parcel of a policy
which has for its end the destruction of our own beloved Empire. Hatred
of Britain--the one foe--has been, for years, the mainspring that has
driven the German machine. The Germans do not hate the French, they do
not hate the Russians, they do not even hate the "beastly Belgians,"
whose country they have laid waste with fire and sword. The half-crazed
Lissauer shrieks aloud that Germans "have but one hate, and one
alone--England," and the mass of the German people applaud him to the
echo.
Very well, let us accept, as we do accept, the situation. Are we going
to neglect the plainest and most obvious warning ever given to a
nation, and permit ourselves to muddle into a peace that would be no
peace, but merely a truce in which Germany would bend her every energy
to the preparation of another bitter war of revenge?
Here lies one of the gravest perils by which our country is to-day
faced, and it is a peril immensely exaggerated by the foolish
peace-talk in which a section of malevolent busybodies are already
indulging. It is as certain as the rising of to-morrow's sun that,
when this war is over, Germany would, if the power were left within
her, embark at once on a new campaign of revenge. We have seen how,
for forty-five long years, the French have cherished in their hearts
the hope of recovering the fair provinces wrested from them in the
war of 1870-1871. And the French, be it remembered, are not a nation
capable of nourishing a long-continued national hatred. Generous,
proud, and intensely patriotic they are; malicious and revengeful they
emphatically are not. As patriotic in their own way as the French, the
Germans have shown themselves capable of a paroxysm of national hatred
to which history offers no parallel.
They have realised, with a sure instinct, that Britain, and Britain
alone, has stood in the way of the realisation of their grandiose
scheme of world-dominion, and it is certain that for long years
to come, possibly for centuries, they will, if we give them the
opportunity, plot our downfall and overthrow us. Are we to muddle the
business of making peace as we muddled the preparations for war? If we
do we shall, assuredly, deserve the worst fate that can be reserved for
a nation which deliberately shuts its eyes to the logic of plain and
demonstrable fact.
Germany can never be adequately punished for the crimes against God
and man which she has committed in Belgium and France. The ancient law
of "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is the only one under
which adequate punishment could be meted out, and whatever happens
we know that the soldiers of the Allies will never be guilty of the
unspeakable calendar of pillage and arson and murder which has made
the very name of "German" a byword throughout civilisation throughout
all the ages that are to come. However thoroughly she is humbled to
the dust, Germany will never taste the unspeakable horror that she
has brought upon the helpless and unoffending victims of her fury
and lust in Belgium and in parts of France. It may be that if they
fall into our hands we should hang, as they deserve to be hanged, the
official instigators of atrocities whose complicity could be clearly
proved--though we, to-day, give valets to the Huns at Donington Hall.
We cannot lay the cities of Germany in ruin, and massacre the civilian
population on the approved German plan. What we can do, and ought to
do, is to make sure that, at whatever cost of blood and treasure to us,
Germany is deprived of any further capacity to menace the peace of the
world. It is the plain and obvious duty of the Allies to see that the
hateful and purely German doctrine that might is the only right shall,
once and for all, be swept from the earth. It is for us to make good
the noble words of Mr. Asquith--that Britain will prosecute the war
to the finish. It is for us to see that there shall be no "muddling
through" when the treaty of peace is finally signed in Berlin.
When the war was forced upon us, the best business brains of this
country recognised that one of the surest and speediest means of
securing an efficient guarantee that Germany should not be able
to injure us in the future would be a strenuous effort to capture
her enormous foreign trade. Modern wars, it must be remembered, are
not merely a matter of the clash of arms on the stricken field. The
enormous ramifications of commercial undertakings, immeasurably greater
to-day than at any time in history, mean that, in the conduct of a
great campaign, economic weapons may be even more powerful than the
sword of the big battalions. This unquestionable fact has been fully
realised by our leading thinkers. Thoughtless people have been heard
to say that, if France and Russia wish to conclude peace, England must
necessarily join with them because she cannot carry on the war alone.
There could be no greater mistake.
Just so long as the British Fleet holds the command of the sea,
Germany's foreign trade is in the paralysing grip of an incubus which
cannot be shaken off. In the meantime, all the seas of all the world
are free to our ships and our commerce, and, though the volume of
world-trade is necessarily diminished by the war, there remains open to
British manufacturers an enormous field which has been tilled hitherto
mainly by German firms.
We may now ask ourselves whether our business men are taking full
advantage of this priceless opportunity offered them for building up
and consolidating a commercial position which in the future, when
the war is ended, will be strong enough to defy even the substantial
attacks of their German competitors. I sincerely wish I could see some
evidence of it. I wish I could feel that our business men of England
were looking ahead, studying methods and markets, and planning the
campaigns which, in the days to come, shall reach their full fruition.
But alas! they are not. We heard many empty words, when war broke out,
of the war on Germany's trade, but I am very much afraid--and my view
is shared by many business acquaintances--that the early enthusiasm of
"what we will do" has vanished, and that when the time for decisive
action comes we shall be found still relying upon the traditional but
fatal policy of "muddling through" which has for so long been typical
of British business as well as official methods.
We shall still, I fear, be found clinging to the antiquated and
worn-out business principles and stiff conventionalities which, during
the past few years, have enabled the German to oust us from markets
which for centuries we have been in the habit of regarding as our own
peculiar preserves. That, in view of the enormous importance of the
commercial warfare of to-day, I believe to be a very real peril.
King George's famous "Wake up, England!" is a cry as necessary to-day
as ever. I do not believe Germany will ever be able to pay adequate
indemnity for the appalling monetary losses she has brought upon us,
and if those losses are to be regained it can only be by the capture of
her overseas markets, and the diversion of her overseas profits into
British pockets. Shall we seize the opportunity or shall we "muddle
through"?
This is not a political book, for I am no politician, and, further,
to-day we have no politics--at least of the Radical and Conservative
type. "Britain for the Briton" should be our battle-cry. There is
one subject, however, which, even though it may appear to touch
upon politics, cannot be omitted from our consideration. If the war
has taught us many lessons, perhaps the greatest is its splendid
demonstration of the essential solidarity of the British Empire. We
all know that the German writers have preached the doctrine that the
British Empire was as ramshackle a concern as that of Austria-Hungary;
that it must fall to pieces at the first shock of war. To-day the
British Empire stands before the world linked together, literally, by a
bond of steel. From Canada, from Australia, from India, even--despite
a jarring note struck by German money--from South Africa, "the
well-forged link rings true." Germany to-day is very literally face to
face with the British Empire in arms, with resources in men and money
to which her own swaggering Empire are relatively puny, and with, I
hope and believe, a stern determination no less strong and enduring
than her own. The lesson assuredly will not be lost upon her: shall we
make sure that it is not lost upon us?
For some years past there has been a steadily growing opinion--stronger
in the Overseas Dominions, perhaps, than here at home--that the
British Empire should, in business affairs, be much more of a "family
concern" than it is. Either at home, or overseas, our Empire produces
practically everything which the complexity of our modern social and
industrial system demands. Commerce is the very life-blood of our
modern world: is it not time we took up in earnest the question of
doing our international business upon terms which should place our
own people, for the first time, in a position of definite advantage
over the stranger? Is it not time we undertook the task of welding the
Empire into a single system linked as closely by business ties as by
the ties of flesh and blood and sentiment? That, I believe, will be one
of the great questions which this war will leave us for solution.
In the past, Germany's chief weapon against us has been her commercial
enterprise and activity. It should now be part of our business to
prevent her harming us in the future, and, in the commercial field, the
strongest weapon in our armoury has hitherto remained unsheathed. Shall
we, in the days that are to come, do our imperial trading on a great
family scale--British goods the most favoured in British markets--or
shall we here again "muddle through" on a policy which gives the
stranger and the enemy alien at least as friendly a welcome as we
extend to our own sons?
Perhaps, in the days that are coming, that in itself will be a question
upon which the future of the British Empire will depend.