as the approval of the whole German people. Do they
realize what it means? Are they not aware that no treaty, political or
otherwise, with the German people is worth the paper it is written on?
That the country and its inhabitants have forfeited all claims to trust?
That no one, in future, should make a bargain with a German, knowing
that he is a dishonorable and dishonored man?... Germany has made many
blunders--an almost inconceivable number of blunders; but this
blundering crime is surely the culminating point of blunder. Did any
nation ever before deliberately throw away its political, commercial,
financial, and social credit to no purpose? To gain what? England as an
adversary, and the contempt of the whole civilized world. Her treatment
of the poor Belgian civilians has added to contempt, loathing and scorn.

Now, gentlemen, you see our problem. At, the end of this war we shall
have Germans again as trade rivals; if there is a German State our
German rivals will be backed by their State. They will, as they have
done before, steal our inventions, use trickery and fraud to oust us
from world markets, and we know now that we need not expect any bargain
to be binding. I am not a commercial man; science is supposed to be
above such trickery. Yet I read a few days ago, not as a single example,
but only as the last I happen to remember, an article by a
distinguished American professor, protesting with great moderation that
an important scientific generalization which he published in 1902 had
been annexed, without acknowledgment, by a versatile and adroit
professor in the University of Berlin--an acquaintance of my own--in the
year 1906; and it was not until 1910 that the latter was made to confess
his guilt, with much subterfuge and blustering.

Commerce, indeed, is in Germany regarded as war; we now know it, and we
must meet war by war. How is that war to be waged?

I can see only two methods. One is recommended by a writer in The
Observer of the 10th inst., who acknowledges himself to have been a
lifelong free trader. His remedy is a 25 per cent. duty on all German
goods, and on German goods only, imported (or rather offered for import)
into Great Britain and her colonies, and also that German passenger
liners and freight boats should not be allowed to call at any one of the
ports of the empire. His reasons are fully stated in his letter; it is
signed "A City Merchant."

The other method is perhaps less apt to offen