inancial institutions. It would be called by some high-sounding name,
suggestive of the country experimented upon, and little by little the
German capital would be diminished to a minimum and local capital
substituted, but the supreme control kept zealously in the hands of
the Teuton directors. Industries would then be financed and finally
bought up. Others would also be financed but deliberately ruined.
Competition would in this way be effectively killed, and little by
little the life-juices of the country would be canalized to suit the
requirements of German trade, industry and politics.

If an industry in the invaded country was judged capable of becoming
subsidiary to some German industry, the Bank would maintain it for the
purpose of amalgamating the two later on, or else having the foreign
concern absorbed by the Teutonic. This was a labour of patriotism and
profit. But if the business was recognized as a formidable rival to
some German enterprise, it was doomed. The procedure in this case was
simple. The Bank advanced money readily, tied the firm financially,
rendering it wholly tributary; and then when the hour of destiny
struck, the credit was suddenly withdrawn and the curtain rung up in
the Bankruptcy Court. When this consummation became public, the
unsuspecting foreigner would ask with naive astonishment: "How can it
be bankrupt? I understood that Germans were financing it." They were,
and it was precisely for that reason, and because it was on the way to
prosperity as a rival to some German firm, that it was suffocated.[4]

[4] Cf. _L'Invasione tedesca in Italia_, pp. 118, 119.

This ingenious system proved exceptionally effective in Brazil. It has
been said that that republic is become a dependency of Germany. What
cannot be gainsaid is that about one-third of Brazil's national
debt[5] is owing to German bankers, and the whole financial and
industrial movement of the country is swayed by the Society of
Colonization which is German, by the German Society for Mutual
Protection, by the German-Brazilian Society and by the three
Navigation Companies whose steamers ply between Brazil and the
Fatherland.[6] It is because of the far-reaching power and influence
which has accrued to Germany from this successful invasion that
Professor Schmoller of the Berlin University could write: "It behoves
us to desire at any and every cost that, by the next century, a German
land of twenty or thirty million inhabitants s