The war was started by Germany. Her authorities deny that they
started it, but I am willing to let the statement I have just made
await the verdict of history. The thing that needs to be explained is
why Germany started the war. Remember what the position of Germany in
the world was--as enviable a position as any nation has ever
occupied. The whole world stood at admiration of her wonderful
intellectual and material achievements, and all the intellectual men
of the world went to school to her. As a university man I have been
surrounded by men trained in Germany, men who had resorted to Germany
because nowhere else could they get such thorough and searching
training, particularly in the principles of science and the
principles that underlie modern material achievements.
Her men of science had made her industries perhaps the most competent
industries in the world, and the label, "Made in Germany," was a
guarantee of good workmanship and of sound material. She had access
to all the markets of the world, and every other man who traded in
those markets feared Germany because of her effective and almost
irresistible competition. She had a place in the sun. Why was she not
satisfied? What more did she want? There was nothing in the world of
peace that she did not already have, and have in abundance.
We boast of the extraordinary pace of American advancement. We show
with pride the statistics of the increase of our industries and of
the population of our cities. Well, those statistics did not match
the recent statistics of Germany. Her old cities took on youth, grew
faster than any American cities ever grew; her old industries opened
their eyes and saw a new world and went out for its conquest, and yet
the authorities of Germany were not satisfied.
You have one part of the answer to the question why she was not
satisfied in her methods of competition. There is no important
industry in Germany upon which the Government had not laid its hands
to direct it and, when necessity arose, control it.
You have only to ask any man whom you meet who is familiar with the
conditions that prevailed before the war in the matter of
international competition to find out the methods of competition
which the German manufacturers and exporters used under the patronage
and support of the Government of Germany. You will find that they
were the same sorts of competition that we have decided to prevent by
law within our own borders. If they could not sell their goods
cheaper than we could sell ours, at a profit to themselves, they
could get a subsidy from the Government which made it possible to
sell them cheaper anyhow; and the conditions of competition were thus
controlled in large measure by the German Government itself.
But that did not satisfy the German Government. All the while there
was lying behind its thought, in its dreams of the future, a
political control which would enable it, in the long run, to dominate
the labor and the industry of the world.