Frank Brangwyn's Noteworthy Painting, "Mater Dolorosa Belgica," a Feature of the Recent Royal Academy Exhibit in London

mere announcement of this hypothesis causes the appearance of puzzles, twists, and renunciations of a new character. The present writer knows something about these things, as he has negotiated with Canada, which, as has been noted, is ready to establish tariffs of various grades, ranging from the preferential rate accorded to England to the extremes of the general tariff against economic adversaries. You may imagine what would happen if the economic adversaries were also enemies on the political field!

But, turning to the kernel of our argument, how are you going to prevent the persons to whom are refused equitable tariffs, who receive no special favors, &c., from emigrating to the favored States with their capital and their technical experts and temporarily assuming, according to their custom, a national appearance? If the inhibition in

tended to exclude them is not put into effect by wise and powerful methods, you will have the dreaded enemy in your own house, where he might, after a longer or shorter period, become nationalized, but where he might also resist in secret.

These problems appear to us to be of a kind worthy of free, calm discussion, both at home and outside of our kingdom. For after our wars shall have ended gloriously and happily, there will be damages found among the gains, and the nations that might not be able to sell their goods to their former customers, and might not find themselves welcomed by new ones, would complain about this and would suffer from it. Complaints and suffering would injure the solidarity of the friendships that we all wish to preserve intact as a guard against vigilant enemies not disposed to disarm and to forget.

Dr. Shadwell takes a very serious view of the labor troubles which are likely to follow the war, especially if the British Nation cannot be aroused to the necessity of completely defeating the Central Powers and discrediting the Kaiser's Government in the eyes of the German people. He says in part:

S to industrial conditions at home, I confess that I regard the prospect with the greatest apprehension; it is full of menace and I can see no way out. Every one in a position to judge with whom I have discussed the subject is of the same opinion.

In the first place, the whole question of industrial relations in Great Britain has a sinister background which seems to be unknown to the cheery optimists who shout for an economic war. It is a background of interrupted strife of the most determined character, which is only waiting the conclusion of the war to be resumed with undiminished ardor. If the war had not

occurred we should before this have witnessed an industrial conflict certainly on a larger scale and probably more violent than any known before. The elements not only remain in full force, but they have been reinforced by circumstances attending the war. The trade unions have been asked to suspend their rules and customs, and to a very considerable extent, though not to the extent commonly believedthey have done so. It is a great sacrifice on their part and it deserves full recognition. One union has been particularly affected, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. A very large proportion of the war work, and especially the new work, falls within its province, and it has been invaded by hosts of unskilled workers, male and female. The engineers have acquiesced wth extreme reluctance, in so far as they have acquiesced; and their reluctance is based on definite grounds.

Their society was the first of the great

craft unions to be formed more than half a century ago, and it has always been a hight caste, exclusive body, very jealous of its status. It has maintained the art and mystery (art et métier) of the trade as something requiring a long and special initiation which raised those who had passed it above other workmen. And for the thoroughly skilled mechanic the claim holds good today. The all-around British engineer is the best man of his class that there is. He is better than the German or the French, and in the United States he is the best Amercan workman. But time and change have so altered the conditions of work that the superiority of the engineer has become fictitious in many departments. It has been artificially maintained, and now the war has exposed the fiction. Many operations once jealously confined to the skilled man have been thrown open, and it has been proved on a large scale that any body can perform the n with a few days' and even a few hours' teaching. It began with turning and other machine processes, and now it has gone on to hand tools and the high mysteries of fitting. The thorough mechanic is still absolutely indispensable—more perhaps than ever-but he has seen whole fields, once his own, captured by amateurs; and this has at the same time revealed the extent to which limitation of output has been regularly practiced.

All this has been a great trial, and it has been accentuated by a glaring inequality. Some of the most highly skilled work cannot be priced because it is too varied and irregular. It is paid by the day, and the men doing it have not shared the enormous increase in earnings made on piecework. Thus the thorough mechanic has been getting his 43 shillings 6 pence a week, and has seen the amateur from the grocer's counter, the office stool, and the cowshed taking twice and three times as much. This is the result of the prices fixed for new war work during the scramble for labor.

The unprecedented earnings in some trades will themselves be another cause of trouble peculiar to this country. They have set a new standard of living which will not be readily relinquished.

We shall go into peace with this prospect of unprecedented industrial turmoil and strife before us; and on the top of that will be all the political strife-home rule and the rest of it. In other words, the prospect is civil war, and that without any reference to the real war. But the termination and result of the latter will make all the difference. If the war ends with a changed and chastened Germany, less convinced of her superiority, less aggressive, less ambitious, more preoccupied with setting her own house in order than with plans for dominating her neighbors, we may get through our troubles. But if the war ends in a stalemate, and leaves Germany with the military régime intact, animated with the same as and ambitions, bent on the eventual control of the sea and the downfall of the British Empire, we shall surely go down unless we altogether change our ways. We shall be in no position to meet the commercial competition with which she will immediately proceed to undermine our strength by means of carefully prepared and methodical plans. That is what the Germans intend, and they are eager for peace in order to begin. Other competitors, more formidable than ever, will also have the advantage of us. Our industrial system will be in chaos through the mad conflict between employers and employed, and when we emerge it will be too late. The persons who talk about the economic war and promise themselves the crushing of German commerce and industry are like children playing over a rattlesnake's hole and anticipating the pleasure of pulling it out by the tail.

I think the war will end in an industrial revolution here. The only chance for us is to see that it also ends in a moral and political revolution in Germany.

AF

FTER the war has closed, Germany will remain in all fundamentals the Germany which existed before the war. She will have lost many thousands of her best manhood, but the population of Germany increases at the rate of 800,000 a year. She will be burdened by a great debt, but the Germans are a frugal people and will bend themselves to the task of adjusting the balance. Germany will be suffering from commercial and industrial congestion, owing to our blockade, but the remedy for the disease will be a policy of dumping." Germany, it may be, will be badly defeated, but the 60,000,000 or 70,000,000 people will remain a menace to all democracies. They have been revealed as the most exclusive, selfish, and inhumane people on the face of the globe. They form part of a soulless machine.

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Is it imagined that Germany, when this war is over, will abandon the economic war upon which her business men had determined when, owing to causes beyond their control, the Emperor and his political and military advisers, in complete confidence that the result would be as in 1864, 1866, and 1870, determined to put to the supreme test the vast German army and the new German fleet? The foundations for the economic struggle which had been laid before the present hostilities broke out are, we need not doubt, even now being strengthened. This war with gun, cannon, and bayonet will leave the German Nation essentially the same in characteristics that it was in the early Summer of 1914, but with its heart blackened and its passions roused the cruel, soulless, unmoral race which this struggle has revealed. Germany will apply to commerce the same ruthless, creedless principles which have been exhibited on land and on sea during the war-copying in cheap forms other people's designs, imitating other people's trade marks, "spying" in Foreign Offices and factories, "dump

ing" in distant countries in order to ruin home industries, strangling decent trade as a preliminary to extortion. Germany is organized, from end to end, for this new war. It is the most highly organized empire which has ever existed.

On the other hand, the British Empire, as Sir Robert Borden has said, "is in some respects a mere disorganization.” It has no economic coherence; its industries are unrelated to each other.

On the success or failure attending the attempt to solve the economic problem which confronts the British people will depend the future of the British Empire. As "a mere disorganization," it cannot fight successfully a highly organized German Empire with its railways, its canals, its ships, its syndicates, its diplomatists, and its tariff all combined in one effort.

Where, then, do we stand as we confront the future? On moral grounds Germany-the land of the Huns tomorrow as it is today-must be ostracized, otherwise the precedents of this warthe murders by submarines, by Zeppelins and poison gas, and the inhumanities practiced on prisoners-will become established. Punishment must follow such acts-punishment which will be felt in the remotest corners of the German Empire, otherwise the whole human family will be reduced to Germany's level and civilization submerged in barbarism. The German Empire is a house of sickness; we must not permit the infection to reach the British Empire. A period of isolation must be enforced on the enemy. On economic grounds also Germany must be ostracized. We cannot again expose ourselves to the dangers of peaceful penetration" by an unmoral people, which were so dramatically exposed when war broke out. If we are to save our soul, we must preserve our body.

We have come to the parting of the

ways. As it has been apparent for twenty months past that the existing organization of imperial defense is defective, so it will become increasingly apparent that the present economic disorganization of the empire threatens its very existence. This war concluded we must be prepared to wage successfully the economic war-reforming our system of education, co-ordinating science and industry, reorganizing our trades, readjusting the tariffs of the empire, protecting our merchant navy from un

The op

scrupulous competition, and regularizing and developing our arrangements for defense by land as by sea. portunity offering when the present struggle is at an end will never recur. Our moral sense demands that Germany, having placed herself without the pale, shall be kept there until she has expiated her crimes and regained her sanity. That interval will enable us to complete the task which lies before us of converting the British Empire into a benign civilizing and economic unit.

TH

HE first question that Dr. Helfferich took up was the following:

"What does the opening of the way through the Balkans to Constantinople mean to Germany and to AustriaHungary, and what does it mean to Bulgaria and Turkey?" When a member of the Managing Board of the Deutsche Bank, Dr. Helfferich devoted his activities especially to Turkish financing, so this question probably made an unusual appeal to him. He said:

Apart from military value, which every one understands, it brings together the West and the Near East. First, it restores direct communication down the Danube to the Black Sea; that is, from Germany to Bulgaria and Turkey, with no enemy State interfering with the traffic. The cost of carriage by water being cheap, facilities are afforded for German and Austro-Hungarian exports to Bulgaria and Turkey, and, vice versa, from Bulgaria and Turkey to AustriaHungary and Germany.

"Of course, for Germany it is economically of great importance to get raw material, such as grain and fodder, from Bulgaria, and cotton, fruit, copper, tobacco, and wool from Turkey. Incidentally, the menace of Serbia to traffic on the Danube has now been removed.

"All markets concerned have been brought closer together; also, political relations at a time like this have more or less effect on trade. In many ways Germany will give Turkey the benefit of the most up-to-date advice that scientific research enables us to offer; particularly will this be done regarding agricultural methods. Already Bulgarian and Turkish exports to Austria-Hungary and Germany have increased enormously. The railway carries through Bulgaria high-class goods, but in peace times the sea route would be the cheaper for bulky goods going to Turkey. As for the effect on Bulgaria and Turkey, by increasing their trade and economic strength these countries will also increase their financial strength."

The next question that Dr. Helfferich answered was:

"What is the condition of German savings banks?" He said:

"The deposits in German savings banks are now as large as they were before the last war loan was paid for and issued. They had a greater number of deposits in 1915 than in 1914. Of course, this condition is wholly due to the patriotic spirit of the German people."

Another question attracted Dr. Helf-`