GERMANY FOREWARNED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 1673, 10 February 1917, Page 2

GERMANY FOREWARNED.

'THAT Germany did not plunge unwarned into war is shown by The World’s Work, which recalls that on May IHh, 1912, Herr E. Possehl, one of the greatest merchants in Lubeck, delivered a lecture in Berlin on what would he the effect on German industry and trade if there were war. There had been ominous threatenings of war in 1911 over the Morocco affair. Herr Possehl spoke at the invitation of General Klein, a well-known disciple of Pan-Ger-manism. He commenced by insisting that his address should not be reported, because, of necessity, he would have to call attention to the weak points in the German State as well as the strong. “1 am convinced,” he said “that the war which England would wage with all her might on our seaborne trade would —far more surely than war on land with France —have most serious results for Germany and end in dragging us to our knees. Then he went on to speak of the stoppage of -work and of blockade, of the more than £900,009,000 worth of German trade, represented by exports and imports, of which more than £650,000,000 worth would be at the mercy of the English Navy. He spoke of scarcity of corn and foodstuffs which Germany buys abroad to the value of approximately £50,000,000 per annum, the risk of stoppage of factories, scarcity of rol-ling-stock, the six or eight million persons who would be thrown upon the State, all of which appeared to him to have such an element of danger that he went on to suggest the setting-up of a standing committee composed of the most prominent business men, drawn from the ranks of the manufacturing and trading classes, agriculturalists, and bankers. “These economic problems,” he cried, “must so greatly effect the destiny of our people that surely they are as important as military considerations.” It should be added that sonic lime ago it was reported that Herr Possehl had been arrested in Germany for “dealing with the enemy.”