ssen
owned by Krupp. In the same position are the great French works at
Creusot, owned by Schneider, and those of our own English firms,
Armstrongs, Vickers, John Brown, and Cammell Laird. These are all
successful concerns, and the shareholders have reaped large profits. I
believe that at Creusot the dividends have reached twenty per cent., and
Armstrongs yield rarely less than ten per cent. It is necessary to speak
very plainly about industries of this kind, because, however we like to
phrase it, they represent the realisation of private profit through the
instruments of death and slaughter. It would be bad enough if they
remained purely private companies, but they really represent the most
solid public organisations in the world. We know the intimate relations
between Krupp and the German Government, and doubtless also between
Messrs. Schneider and the French Government. This sordid manufacture of
the instruments of death constitutes a vast business, with all kinds of
ramifications, and the main and deadly stigma on it is that it is bound to
encourage and promote war. Let me quote some energetic sentences from Mr.
H.G. Wells on this point: "Kings and Kaisers must cease to be commercial
travellers of monstrous armament concerns.... I do not need to argue, what
is manifest, what every German knows, what every intelligent educated man
in the world knows. The Krupp concern and the tawdry Imperialism of Berlin
are linked like thief and receiver; the hands of the German princes are
dirty with the trade. All over the world statecraft and royalty have been
approached and touched and tainted by these vast firms, but it is in
Berlin that the corruption is centred, it is from Berlin that the
intolerable pressure to arm and still to arm has come."[14]

What is the obvious cure for this state of things? It stares us in the
face. Governments alone should be allowed to manufacture weapons. This
ought not to be an industry left in private hands. If a nation, through
its accredited representatives, thinks it is necessary to arm itself, it
must keep in its own hands this lethal industry. Beyond the Government
factories there clearly ought to be no making of weapons all over Europe
and the world.

[14] There are one or two pamphlets on this subject which are worth
consulting, especially _The War Traders_, by G.H. Perris (National Peace
Council, St. Stephen's House, Westminster), and _The War Trust Exposed_,
by J.F. Walton Newbold (the