graphical expression. In July, 1914, it stood upon a dazzling and commanding height, What you want to the first of all nations in military prowess, almost the first in commerce, colonial possessions, influence and wealth. No other nation had ever approached the German development of commerce nor the rapidity with which Germany had built a vast colonial empire. Manufacturing grew with commerce, huge private fortunes with the development of business, huge power with the growth of private fortunes. Meantime, the population increased amazingly. The 38,000,000 people that faced France in 1870 had become almost 70,000,000 by the middle of 1914. For the next fundamental truth turn to the map. Looking at it attentively you will see that geographically the flow of Germany's commerce must be north and south -geographically-please note. Her only ports are on the Baltic and the North Sea; she looks always straight at the North Pole. But as a matter of fact all the development of her huge commerce was east and west, and the more rapidly it developed with the rise of her colonial empire, the more she felt the tremendous pressure of this anomalous condition. Her trade and her growth were upon the Atlantic; her ports were on the North Sea and the Baltic. Her great and always augmenting business on the Atlantic was therefore forced through two awkward, inadequate and perilous channels. It must go far northward to a North Sea port and then come back by a detour through the Straits of Dover to that Atlantic for which it was headed. Or it must be shipped through alien lands to alien ports and get finally to sea by Rotterdam, Antwerp, Havre, Cherbourg, or in the case of Oriental traffic, very likely by far away Genoa. The route by the North Sea ports violated nature and was costly in time and money. Besides, as the wise German statesmen saw very early, it invited the disaster that has now come upon the land. That is to say, traffic by this route must pass through the Straits of Dover, as through the narrow neck of a bottle very easily stoppered. Therefore, in case of war, Germany not producing enough food for her own support, would inevitably be starved. This was a condition utterly intolerable and impossible. If it were to remain it might nullify all of the military strength of Germany and render her great army of no avail. Before such a menace of what use would it be to train and develop these 8,000,000 valiant fighters? No army can fight against General Hunger, and in a few weeks, therefore, the Straits of Dover might Know about Paint is usually to be found in The Carter Times, our magazine for Contracting Painters. It is published to help painters do better work and get more work to do. To those journeymen who expect to become contractors The Carter Times will be sent free on request. Your paint problems not covered in current issues of The Carter Times may be submitted to us without fee, and while we do not guarantee to answer every question we will give you the best information possessed by experienced master painters and the best paint chemists of the country. The Paint Information Bureau Carter White Lead Co. make the mighty German Empire no more powerful than Norway. On the other hand, to filter German commerce through foreign harbors was, if possible, still more dangerous, while even in times of peace it was costly, slow, thumbhanded and an increasing handicap to the development of German trade, now being pushed forward by irresistible forces, as the population grew on one hand and the foreign trade grew on the other. The control of her ports, therefore, became an evolutionary necessity. was Meantime, other things were at work. trade The great foreign producing these great fortunes; capital was accumulating, and as is always inevitable, was becoming daily more powerful; the territory of the Fatherland had not increased since the war accessions, but the population within it had almost doubled. The economic needs of this increased population were one great power always moving against the artificial barriers that hemmed in its trade and its supplies, and the power of profits was another and still greater. Accumulated capital found that by the lack of normal harbor conditions it was deprived of an illimitable promise of more profits. Capital, therefore, must have ports on the Atlantic. The necessities of business imperatively demanded them. In 1913 Germany's export and import trade reached the impressive figures of four billion five hundred million dollars, of which more than three-quarters was carried by sea, mostly through the narrow neck of the bottle and describing the useless parabola of the North Sea. Every dollar's worth so carried was a protest against an enforced and unnatural conditions in the crazy world of competition, and spoke eloquently of other dollars and other profits if only that abnormal condition could be corrected. Under such circumstances something was due to break. Yet To the discerning it was no new matter. Prince Bismarck had seen it even in the days before the creation of the Empire, when he was chancellor of only Prussia. He had seen that the Rhine was the natural artery of German business and the mouth of it was blocked to Germany; he knew that some day this would become a deadly condition. Prussia was one of the Powers that had signed the treaty solemnly guaranteeing the independence and security of Belgium; France was another. With Holland Prussia was on the friendliest terms. in 1868 Prince Bismarck cynically proposed to Napoleon the Third that notwithstanding existing treaties France and Prussia should join hands and make war upon Belgium and Holland, after which France should annex Belgium and Prussia should annex Holland. Then France and Prussia should unite to overawe any European Power that might object to this piracy, which would give to Prussia Rotterdam, a port close to the Atlantic, and the control of the great commerce of the Rhine. Bismarck saw clearly what all this would mean; and yet at that time the commercial needs of Germany were but trivial indeed compared with the commerce that at the beginning of 1914 was rolling in upon her. As the difficulties of this situation grew, many wise Germans, perceiving them, believed that Holland would sooner or later be attracted into the Empire and Rotterdam would thus become a German port. Holland, in spite of some propaganda, showed no such inclination. Hotter-headed men, and the members of a powerful organization I am to describe a little later, observed the map of France. Rotterdam was one port, opening toward the Atlantic, but not on it, and again it was north of the bottle-neck of Dover Straits. One port? What was the matter with having six? And three of them directly on the Atlantic, where there would be no chance for anybody to work that bottle neck? What was the matter with Dunkirk, Calais, Boulogne, Havre, Cherbourg and Brest? Not to speak of anything that lay between? A war with France, now, would cost France more territory like Alsace and Lorraine. Suppose that territory should happen to be Northern France down to and including Brest. All Germany's problems would be solved. Of course, every other condition was exactly right to further such suggestions. There was, first of all, the preposterous form of government that for some inexplicable reason the people of Germany have tolerated, being a relic of the Middle Ages thrust absurdly into the era of telegraphs and steam engines. In Germany the people have nothing to do with the declaring of war; war is declared at the will of the autocratic emperor. Monarchies usually mean war; democracy means peace. At heart most plain people all the world over detest war and if they had democracy and a chance would vote against it. The medieval form of government surviving in Germany gave them no chance. There was also the attitude of the Kaiser as the hereditary War Lord. There was next the mere existence of the huge German armament, the greatest and the most expensive in the world. It was the old plain, inevitable rule of investment. Untold millions of money had gone into these accouterments. What? Shall they not be used for the advantage of the nation that has toiled and denied itself to create them? Here were the tools ready at hand. Why have we been so patiently gathering them all these years if they are not for service? There was also the incessant object lesson of militarism and its strange apotheosis in which Germany has indulged. From his earliest consciousness every German has been accustomed to the thought of war and armies and military glory, the fame of Germany's victories and the details of her great battles. Soldiers always thronged his native town and officers overawed and insulted it. At the proper age he became a soldier himself and learned thoroughly the business of slaughter. You will not easily impress such people with the horrors of war nor with any aversion to it. To them war will seem the proper occupation of mankind. There was also developing among many Germans one of the most extraordinary and alluring dreams that ever possessed the human mind. In forty years Germany had spread to these colossal proportions; but obviously it would not stop. Here, then, plainly was the final world power. The world would be Germanized; eventually the German Empire would extend around the globe and the German Kaiser would rule a domain comprising practically the whole of civilization. First all the Teutonic peoples, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Holland, and the rest would come together with Germany proper, and nothing could stop a power so tremendous. It would spread until the German Empire should dwarf all previous empires mentioned in history, and include them. Out of this idea and out of the imperative commercial necessities together came the next factor in this list, which is the Pan-Germanic League, with exactly these objects plainly avowed. Presently the League developed into a great organization, with branches and voluntary agents in many unexpected places, and before long it began to exert its influence on the Kaiser's government. Not the smallest element in its growth was the fact that one of its most active and ardent supporters was the Crown Prince. The League naturally liked the idea that Germany should have Atlantic ports; Atlantic ports were necessary for the development of the Empire and would hasten the day when the Kaiser should sit upon the world's throne. The Crown Prince liked the idea, too. He helped the League and the League encouraged him. As this singular young man's ambition was solely for a warlike career and as he had conceived the belief that he was a military genius destined to eclipse Napoleon, you can see that here was fertile ground in which trouble could be sown. We are not to slander the good German people by supposing that all of them, or a really great number were conquest-mad, or determined upon war for its own sake, or obsessed with the League's ideas, but insidiously those ideas came to influence millions that were not essentially keen for battle. German patriotism is a great matter; so, naturally enough, is the German's pride in his country's achievements. Even in the League itself were few that ever dreamed they were lighting a match in the European powder house. Germany had a way of winning what she wanted, and it was somewhat naively taken for granted that she would win this. When I was looking into these matters in the summer of 1913 I found PanGermanic supporters that warmly and sincerely believed their movement to be in the interest of general peace. "There can be no assurance of peace," they said, "so long as we have so many nations with conflicting interests. The way to peace is through unity. Look at the states that now compose the German Empire. Once they were jealous, warring, trouble-making nations. Now they dwell together in absolute harmony united under the German eagle. There is no peace in the world equal to the peace in the German Empire." They said that when the German flag should fly over the greater part of Europe and nations now independent and troublemaking had joined the Empire as integral states, the like peace would come to the world, but it could come in no other way. While all these factors were at work there was always behind them the growing pressure of Germany's economic needs and the increasing demands of its capital. The result was that for at least nine years the controlling influences in Germany have looked for and determined upon a war with France; not wholly for motives of conquest, and not wholly, as you will see from this, with any evil intent, but because of conditions. As a result of this determination and of these conditions a great number of persons in Germany were induced to believe that France constituted the threat of war in Europe, and that no peace could come until France should be made powerless, since France was at all times plotting, planning and thirsting for revenge. The manner in which these useful beliefs were created, fostered and developed is the heart of the subject and the thing I am aiming at as the substance of the lesson -if we do not want any more of these upheavals. Dear Mr. Carnegie, if you really want peace on earth and are not looking merely for advertisement, will you kindly consider this? How will you have peace so long as capital controls the nations and capital finds that its profits are blocked in a way that can be relieved only through war? How will you have peace so long as capital controls the press and the press of one nation is skilfully and industriously employed to arouse deadly hatred against another nation? Solve those problems and the Peace Palace out at Carnegie Plein may become something else than a ghastly joke. For here we are, with a situation quite familiar in our own country and well-known to observers everywhere. Germany has many newspapers of a sober, earnest and truthful purpose. It has some that are as independent as they can be under existing conditions and the exist ing government. But it is also afflicted with a great controlled press censored like ours by the powerful commercial interests, and censored also to a certain extent by the government. It was this part of the Ger man press, which, being alert, enterprising and somewhat yellow, had the largest circulations, that did the mischief so far as the masses of the people were concerned and constituted the last but not the least of the chain of influences that brought on the war. For eight years the policy of these newspapers had been to represent France as seething with anti-German frenzy, roaring for revenge about Alsace and Lorraine, and preparing to spring upon Germany as a lion upon its prey. More pernicious and preposterous inventions were never conIceived by the mind of man. Anybody that knows France knows that for many years all she has wanted and worked for is to be let alone. As matters stood, anything else would have been the sheerest lunacy, and the French are eminently sane. Since the Franco-Prussian war the relative positions of the two countries had greatly changed. France had stood almost still in the matter of population; Germany's popu lation had increased from 39,000,000 to 68,000,000. France had gained next to nothing in strength; Germany had become the first military power of the world. France against Germany would have no more chance than a popgun against Gibraltar. All Frenchmen knew this perfectly well, and had long known it. Besides, the passions of another generation were practically extinct. The old cry of "Revanche!" that echoed through the '70s was long stilled; France had given up the hope of regaining the two provinces and to a certain extent had forgotten them. She had quite enough to attend to in other directions, one being her domestic affairs and another being to keep herself alive. The kept press of Germany persistently manufactured the contrary opinion, and the people, being unsophisticated about modern press control, accepted its spurious goods for genuine. Even men that should have known better were fooled, and actually believed that France was shaking its fist in Germany's face, at the instant that for the sake of peace France was yielding everything that Germany demanded. In the course of this campaign were produced some of the most monstrous fakes ever known in the history of journalism. We have a habit of thinking that America has the press unapproachable for recklessness, and yet the boldest of our fakers seems but a piker compared with the achievements recorded in Germany. Take a look at some of them and see. (To be continued) BRITISH PAINTERS So AND DECORATORS Exclusive Correspondence of "Painter and Decorator." London, December 22, 1914. RITING at the end of 1914, after five months of the European war, general trade and industrial conditions in the United Kingdom still show continuous improvement. The reaction which followed the first shock of war in the middle of August has been unbroken. far as the employment of labor is concerned the most conclusive figures published are those obtained from statements made monthly by the leading trade unions. These cover all trades and show that the percentage of unemployment at the end of November was 2.9 compared with 4.4 per cent at the end of October. The figures now compare with 2 per cent at the end of November last year, so that we are approximating to a very good before-the-war position. In this latter connection it must be remembered that 1913 was a boom year. About the only trade which still shows depression is the Lancashire cotton industry, but even in it there are symptoms of im provement; the production, particularly of yarn, is being gradually increased. The iron and steel industry is remarkably active and demand in all the staple industries has broadened appreciably and employers and workmen take a far more hopeful view of their prospects than at any time since the war began. Of course, it must be remembered in connection with the low unemployment figures that the heavy enlistments for the new armies have played an important part. It is estimated that by next spring the British army, in all its branches, at home or at the front, drilling or fighting, will number close upon three million men. The vast majority of these are still being trained and will go on being trained for the next month or two. No figures are available as to the exact number of British soldiers at the front but almost the entire regular army was sent out at the very start and, with the exception of men to repair wastage, few additional regiments have been sent out since. The reason is that the Brit Painters and Decorators Wanted We want every subscriber of the Painter and Decorator to send for our free illustrated book about our mail course in Pictorial and Decorative Art. THE ONLY MAIL COURSE of its kind in existense, embracing all features of PICTORIAL AND DECORATIVE ART. Teaching in a practical way, the newest methods of PICTORIAL PAINTING on Wood, Metal, Glass, Boards and Canvas. Especially of benefit to ambitious Painters, Decorators, Bulletin Painters, Card Writers and SCENIC ARTISTS. Everybody can learn to become a Pictorial Man, and more than double his present income. Here is your opportunity. Write for our Illustrated Booklet and full information about this and our THEATRICAL SCENE-PAINTING COURSE. ENKEBOLL ART SCHOOL AMES AVE. STATION, Omaha, NEB. ish army on a peace footing is a small institution-something a little over 100,000 men at home here. All the newly enlisted men require training and their period of training is not yet finished. Still whether through enlistments, or from other cause unemployment is down to a very low ratio, a ratio lower than in many years of peace; and with the situation improving and with tremendous eventualities looming ahead when the new army takes the field, people here regard the situation with equanimity and calmness although in no way seeking to minimise the difficulties of this great war in the world's history. Great numbers of trade unionists are found in the armies now training and also at the front, the latter being Reservists who were called up when the war was declared. The flocking of men to the colors has been so great that the Government has had to ask men in certain industries not to enlist as they would be more useful at home working at those occupations which supply the fighters with their requirements. In a modified way this applies to carpenters and joiners and painters. This is how I mean: The housing of the vast numbers of men taken from their homes during their period of training was at first a very serious problem. Barrack accommodation was only sufficient for the ordinary regular army and was soon exhausted. Furthermore, life under canvas is not healthy at this time of the year, so tents have not been used to any extent. Billetting has had to be resorted to to a large extent. Billetting is assigning quarters to soldiers in the families of private citizens. When a large number of soldiers require accommodation in a certain neighborhood the officers go round to each house and inquire how much accommodation is available and so many men are then "billetted" on the householder. The householder provides the men with beds and, if required, meals, the War Office paying for this bed and board accommodation. Still, billetting is only a make-shift. The Government aims to house all the men in camps These composed of wooden huts. are called huts but they are strong wooden buildings, well drained, warmed and lighted and each capable say of sleeping from twenty to forty men comfortably. It is in the erection of these buildings that the demand for painters, carpenters and joiners has arisen. Trade union rates are paid by the Government and as the men employed are usually away from their homes they are provided with matresses and blankets for sleeping in completed huts. They are supplied with the food they require at special prices. Elsewhere, over the country painters are idle. Attempts are being made by the local authorities to find them work. City schools and public buildings are being repainted and much work usually left until the spring is in operation. Credit must be given to the local unions for bringing this matter forcibly before the various authorities. In some parts of the country unemployment is acute amongst painters and the benefit funds of the local union exhausted. The master painters are bringing this matter of work-on-the-spot before the public. Secretary Davidson, of the London Association of Master Decorators, has issued the following appeal: "Those who control property, whether as owners, architects, solicitors, or agents, as well as public and parochial bodies, can render valuable assistance in alleviating distress if they will forthwith give orders for painting and decorating. By doing this they will render assistance of a practical kind." Much work which under ordinary circumstances would not have been given out is of a decorative character. for Apart from this work there is a vast amount of painting urgently required purely protective purposes. The prices of white lead, linseed oil, turpentine, and paper-hangings, are practically the same as they were at this time last year. The fact that employing painters are willing to cut their margin of profit to the extreme limit means that the cost of painting and decorating work at the present time is as low, or even lower than usual. Questions of wages are being closely watched by the local branches of the National Amalgamated Society of Operative House and Ship Painters and Decorators. In some remote parts of the country the rate has been raised on War Office and Admiralty work from 13 cents to 14 cents per hour. |