The War After the War

While the guns roar from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, and the greatest armed host that history has ever known is still locked in a life-and-death struggle on a dozen fronts, another war, more potent and permanent perhaps than the one which now engulfs Europe, lurks beyond the distant horizon of peace.

Its fighting line will be the boundaries of all human needs; its dynamic purpose a heroic rehabilitation after stupendous loss. It will be the far-flung struggle for the rich prize of International Trade, waiting at the end of the Crimson Lane that sooner or later will have a turning.

Embattled commercial groups will supplant embroiled nations; boycotts, discriminations and exclusions will succeed the strategies of line and trench; the animosities fought out to-day with shell and steel will have their heritage in ruthless rivalries.

How shall we fare in this tumult of tariff and treaty? Where shall we stand when the curtain of fire fades before a task of regeneration that will spell economic rebirth or disaster for millions? Will fiscal punishment be meted out to neutral and foe alike? Will reason rule or revenge dictate a costly reprisal in this war after the war?

These are the questions that rise out of the dust and din of the colossal upheaval which is rending half of the world. Directly or indirectly they touch the whole American people, regardless of rank or wealth. The tide of war has rolled us far upon the shores of world affairs. We have prospered in the kinship of the nations. Will the ebb of peace leave us high and dry amid a mighty isolation?

I went to England and France to study this problem at first hand. I interviewed Cabinet Ministers; I talked with lawmakers, soldiers, captains of capital, masters of industry, and plain, everyday business men. Often the talk was disturbed by shriek of shell or bomb of midnight Zeppelin marauder.

Through all the travail of debt and death that rends the allied peoples runs the clear current of determination to retrieve the immense loss. War is waste; some one must pay--we among the rest. Already the guns are being trained for the inevitable commercial battle, which, willingly or unwillingly, will bring us under fire. Let us examine the plan of campaign.

But before going into the concrete details that mean so much to our future and our fortune, it is important to understand some very essential conditions.

First and foremost is the uncertainty of the war itself. All prophecy--at best a dangerous thing--is purest speculation. No one can tell how long the duel will last; how badly the loser will be beaten; what the terms of peace will be. Yet out of these contingencies will emerge the strong hands that will redraw the trade map of the world. Whatever the outcome, the countries now fighting, especially the Allies, have definitely stated the principles that must govern--for a long time, at least--the whole realignment of commercial relations. Their way shall be the universal way.

In the second place, be you Ally or Teuton and regardless of how you may feel about the ethics of the Great Struggle, it must be remembered that behind the glamour as to whether it is waged to conserve human liberty, maintain the integrity of "scraps of paper" or to safeguard democracy, the larger fact remains that it is a war rooted in commercial jealousies and fanned by commercial aggressions.

Now we come to the really vital point, and it is this: When the guns are hushed you will find that national and industrial defence among the warring countries will be one and the same thing. The Allies learned to their cost that the economic advance of Germany was merely part of her one-time resistless military machine. Her trade and her preparedness went conqueringly hand in hand. Henceforth that game will be played by all. England, for instance, will manufacture dyestuffs not only for her textile trades, but because coal-tar products are essential to the making of high explosives.

Thus, Competition, which was once merely part of the natural progress of a country, will hereafter be a large part of the struggle for national existence.

There is still another factor: No matter who wins, peace must mean prosperity for everybody. For the victor it will take the form of an attempted stewardship of trade and navigation; for the vanquished it will be the dedication of a terrible energy to the twin restoration of pride and product.

Now you begin to see why it is up to the United States to make ready for whatever business fate awaits her beyond the uncertain frontiers of to-morrow. Nor have we been without warning of what may be in store for us. Prohibitive tariffs, blacklists and boycotts, embargoes on mail and cargo, the exclusion from England and France of hundreds of our manufactured articles--all show which way the international trade winds may blow when the belligerents begin to take toll of their losses. Meantime, what are the facts?

Take the case of England. Thirty years ago she was the workshop of the world. From the Tyne to the Thames her factories hummed with ceaseless industry. Her goods went wherever her ships steamed, and that meant the globe. Supreme in her insularity--at once her defence and her undoing--she became infected with the virus of content. Her steel was the best steel; her wares led all the rest. "Take it or leave it!" was her selling maxim. When devices came along that saved labour and increased production she refused to scrap the old to make way for the new. Born, too, was the evil of restricted output. Moss began to grow on her vaunted industrial structure. England lagged in the trade procession.

But as she lagged the assimilative German streamed in through her hospitable door. He served his apprenticeship in British mills; took home the secrets and methods of British art and craft. He geared them to cheap labour, harnessed product to masterful distribution, and became a World Power. Before long he had annexed the dye trade; was competing with British steel; was making once-cherished British goods.

What the German did in England he duplicated elsewhere. The world of ideas was his field and, with insatiate hunger, he garnered them in. He cunningly acquired the sources of raw supply, especially the essentials to national defence; for he overlooked nothing. All was grist to his mills. He pitched his tents upon debatable trade lands. His rivals called it economic penetration, because he invariably took root. For him it was merely good business.

Then England suddenly realised that Germany had left her behind in the race for international commerce. Indifference lay at the root of this backsliding. It was easier and cheaper to buy the German-made product and reship it than to produce the same article at home. Sloth hung like a chain on English energy. What did it matter? No forest of bayonets hemmed her in; she was still Mistress of the Seas.

Meantime Germany dripped with efficiency and ached with expansion. Her amazing teamwork between state and business, stimulated by an interested finance, drove her on to a place in the sun. The shadows seemed far away when the great war crashed into civilisation. Then England woke to the folly of her blindness. The mystery of coal-tar products was shut up in a German laboratory; the secrets of tungsten, necessary to the toughest steel, were imprisoned in a Teutonic mill; and so on down a long list of products vital to industry and defence.

Even those early and tragic reverses of the war did not stir the stolid British bulk. Men fought for a chance to fight; restriction still oppressed factory output. Red tape vied with tradition to block the path of military and industrial preparation.

Then the Lion stirred; the sloth fell away; men and munitions were enlisted; the strong hand was put on labour tyranny; conscription succeeded the haphazard voluntary system. Britain got busy and she has buzzed ever since.

When the kingdom had become a huge arsenal; when the old sex differences vanished under the touchstone of a common peril; when the first khaki host swept to its place in the battle line, and the grey fleets were once more queens of the seas, England turned to the task of commercial rebuilding, once neglected, but thenceforth to be part and parcel of British purpose.

Animating this purpose, stirring it like a vast emotion, was the New Battle Cry of Empire--the kindling Creed of United Dominions, consecrated to the economic mastery of the world.

But this revival was not an overnight performance. If you know England you also know that it takes a colossal jolt to stir the British mind. The war had been in full swing for over a year and the countryside was an armed camp before the realisation of what might happen commercially after the war soaked into the average islander's consciousness.

Under the impassioned eloquence of Lloyd George the munition workers had been marshalled into an inspired working host; with the magic of Kitchener's name, the greatest of all voluntary armies came into being. But it remained for Hughes, of Australia, to point out the fresh path for the feet of the race.

Who is Hughes, of Australia? You need not ask in England, for the story of his advent, the record of his astounding triumph, the thrilling message that he left implanted in the British breast, constitute one of the miracles of a war that is one long succession of dramatic episodes. This Colonial Prime Minister arrived unknown: he left a popular hero.

Thanks to him, Australia was prepared for war; and when the Mother Lioness sent out the world call to her cubs beyond the seas there was swift response from the men of bush and range. The world knows what the Anzacs did in the Dardanelles; how they registered a monster heroism on the rocky heights of Gallipoli; gave a new glory to British arms.

England rang with their achievements. What could she do to pay tribute to their courage? Hughes was their national leader and spokesman; so the Political Powers That Be said:

"Let us invite the Premier to sit in the councils of the empire and advise us about our future trade policy."

Already Hughes had declared trade war on Germany in Australia. Under his leadership every German had been banished from commonwealth business; by a special act of Parliament the complete and well-nigh war-proof Teutonic control of the famous Broken Hill metal fields had been annulled. He stood, therefore, as a living defiance to the renewal of all commercial relations with the Central Powers. But he went further than this: He decreed trade extermination of the enemy--merciless war beyond the war.

With his first speech in England Hughes created a sensation. Before he came commercial feeling against Germany ran high. Hughes crystallised it into a definite cry. He said what eight out of every ten men in the street were thinking. His voice became the Voice of Empire. Up and down England and before cheering crowds he preached the doctrine of trade war to the death on Germany. He denounced the laxness that had permitted the "German taint to run like a cancer through the fair body of English trade"; he urged complete economic independence of the Dominions. His persistent plea was, "We must have the fruits of victory"; and those fruits, he declared, comprised all the trade that Germany had hitherto enjoyed, and as much more as could be lawfully gained.