ip navigation company, every
purveyor of emigrants is at the same time and by the very force of
things an electoral agent. The position of arbitress and mistress of
the steamship companies carries with it possession of the keys of the
national wealth, and is consequently a formidable weapon of aggressive
competition against all industries, Italian and foreign, which are not
affiliated to those of Germany. The Banca Commerciale, having obtained
that supremacy, forced the Italian companies to lead a languishing
existence in straitened circumstances, whereas they might easily have
grown rich and flourishing. It permits our steamship companies to
subsist and even to earn somewhat, but only just enough to suffice for
the declaration of a modest dividend. That is why Italian navigation
companies levy such excessive rates of freight, why their service is
not organized in accordance with rational and latter day standards,
why they take no thought of winning foreign markets or of national
expansion.[9] They have no means of consigning merchandise at the
domicile, so that the consignees are put to enormous expense for
collection and delivery. And to make matters still worse, Italian
navigation companies are bound with those of Germany by special secret
conventions, which oblige them to abandon to their rivals certain
kinds of merchandise of the Near and the Far East."

[9] Cf. Preziosi, _La Germania a la Conquista dell' Italia_,
p. 57 fol.

If we examine the peculiarly Teuton ways of trade competition in their
everyday guise, and without the glamour of political ideals to
distract our attention, we are confronted with phenomena of a
repulsive character. For the German's keen practical sense, his
sustained concentration of effort on the furtherance of material
interests, and his scorn of ethical restraints render him a formidable
competitor in pacific pursuits and a dangerous enemy in war. His
moral sense is not so much dulled by experience as warped by
education. It may be likened to a clock which has not stopped but
shows the wrong hour. He has been taught that there are times and
circumstances when religious and ethical standards may or must be set
aside, and he arrogates to himself the right of determining them.
Without examining into stories of preternatural meanness and perfidy
which have come into vogue since the outbreak of the war, it is fair
to say that dirty tricks, destructive of all social intercourse,
form