How Long Can Germany Stand the Strain?

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 99, 22 October 1915, Page 4 (Supplement)

How Long Can Germany Stand the Strain?

A GERMAN SCIENTIST REVIEWS POSSIBILITIES AHEAD OF HIS COUNTRY.

CAUL SNYDER will be known to many New Zealanders as the author of "New Conceptions in Science," "The World Machine," "American Kailwajs as Investments," and other works of a similar nature. He contributed the article belowto "Collier's Weekly." In an editorial of the same issue it is pointed out that the commrison he makes between tiie present and past wars is really untenable, because on the facts there can be no comparison.

By Carl Snyder.

Nothing is more striking, in reviewing the first year of the great war, than the fashion in which practically every forecast or expectation which had been made regarding it lias failed. Germany expected a short war, a quick triumph. Her generals expected to be in Paris inside ninety days, and her soldiers wore told that they would be home for Christmas. But they may still be fighting a year from next Christmas. Germany had immense faith in her highly-ti ained army. It was undoubtedly the most efficient fighting machine which' had been devised since Napoleon's; yet nothing is clearer than taat, man for man, it is not worth a whit more than the armies of England or France.

The German Emperor, if he was correctlv quoted, banked heavily on his "bigcannon." The huge Krupp guns made beautiful headlines and much German enthusiasm in'the first thirty days. They have practically been unheard of since. They were a failure except for smashing forts: and, tor the rest, proved no better than some of the French and English guns—if indeed us good. WHERE ALLIES ERRED. Traditions die hard. Most military men believed before the war began that the old relat : ons of attack and m>fence existed still. Experience has shown that the man in the trench behind the machine gun is as good as at least three or four men in an open charge. Practically the only way that an entrenched army can be dislodged is literallv to blast it out. On the side of the Allies all the views and expectations seemed equally wrong. When Lord Kitchener majestically announced that he did not know when the war would end. but that it would begin in May, he seemed the person : fication of cool and determined foresight. But the war did not begin in Mav any more than it began last September.' May in England saw a Cabinet crisis and bitter dissens : on over the lack of ammunition. In spite of the fact that England had raised an army of over two million men, the "big shove" has not come. Consider the irony of the situation. The bright hope of the Allies was the great Steam Roller. France and England were to keep the Huns at bay until the Slav had taken Berlin and Vienna !

And what is the situaUon at the end of the first year?

CARE OF RUSSIA. The Russian Steam Roller seems most effective in rolling backward. It rolled into Galicin and into Prussia, and then rolled out again, leaving something like a million prisoners. Compare this with the splendid achievements of England and France. We smile when we remember how sorry Germany was that her decadent neighbour should be "forced into a brutal war. Possibly France herself is a little surprised at her own dauntless spirit and the brilliant way in which she caught and turned back tlsi' oncoming hordes of the north. Her guns have been deadly, her supples of ammunition bountiful, and her men have fought with all the old French fire, under an eve as cool and far-seeing as Moltke's.

And the weak, "contemptible little army" of Britain! Probably not a hundred thousand were in the field to withstand the great German rush; but they were as effective as Wellington's veterans of old. And to-day, without conscription and without the iron prod of a brutal military autocracy, England has the finest army the Empire ever saw. The Irish uprising, the mu tiny in India, the revolt in Egypt, the Boer rebellion —all the dreams of the fool'sh, doddering .diplomats—have come to naught. The decaying Britisn Empire still stands, and draws her defenders from everyi quarter of the world--and from the prospective mutineers !

BASELESS DREAMS. As baseless, too, have been the dreams of new and revolutionary weapons of war. England has a war fleet of six hundred, and submarines and mines combined have reduced this by a dozen or twenty. She lias a merchant fleet of something like thirteen thous and ships, and to date the ''submarine girdle" which was to starve out Kngland has taken a total of a little of a hundred and fifty of these, including trawlers und colliers.

The aeroplane has been wonderfully effective in rcconna ssance, and lies put an end forever to unexpected ncentration of troops and to most military surprises. But as an agent ot destruction it has been of hardly more worth than the clumsy and venerable Zeppelins. The weapon that has changed the face of war is the machine gun, bacKed by the humble spade.

ILLUSIONS ABOUT BANKRUPTCY

As erroneous and futile as the guesses regarding the war itself have been the efforts to set limits to it through the exhaustion of money and credits. Grave statisticians have compiled appalling figures one of them pretending that after the first six months the warring nations were poorer by a matter of 17,000,000,000d01., or at the rat<> of perhaps 30,000,000,000 for tho year. AH this is part of the unconquerable illus'on that war means colossal waste and exhaustion, and that a prolonged war would mean the bankruptcy of Europe. Few notions are more groundless.

There ; s no evidence t'u ' the Teutonic Allies, practically cut ofT fr>;« the rest of the world by a ring of fire, are as yet suffering from any lack of amunition. So far from this, thev •eem, up to the present time, much better supplied than some of their enemies. And if thev find no shortage, st II less will the other nations with all the rest of the wo'Jd to draw from. The number actually killed and maimed in war is much exaggerated, as the later official acouuts always reveal. On both sides the war probablv has not added much more than a million men to the normal deith rat". Yet one mav ie-.d of estimates of three million killed and wounded in Germany alone: vide the bonlldles- Belloc and his like. As if the reality wen' not horrible and shameful enough I Even if the number of permanently

The years of our Civil War and those just following were for the North at least years of almost unexampled development. It was a period of great railway expansion, the completion of the first transcontnontal, the beginning of the great industrial developmen which, advancing steadily, has now made, the T'ntod States the first industrial nation of the world.

There is good reason to believe, too, that this name period was one of considerable prosperity even for the South. From 1860 to IH7O the imputation of every Southern State steadily increased: and so did rts wealth. The "ruination'' of the South wrought by the war was simply the ruin of it»- rich planters- and of that slave oligarchy which had always been the backbone

of the Southern industrial system. That system was doomed anyway, and the war simply did in a few years what might hare otherwise taken ten or twenty. The same was true, alike for the conqueror and the conquered, in the Franco-Prussian War. That war was the beginning of the amazing industrial advance in Germany, unrivaled anywhere 6ave in the United States. And even France was more prosperous in the ten years that followed the war than in those which had preceded it. THE AVAR-PROFIT AND LOSS. Almost equally illusory are the prevalent notions as to the real cost of the war. For example, the first year of the present conflict will levy upon France something like four billion dollars, England perhaps five billions, and Germany still more. A great man,, writers assume and numbers of people believe that this is a total loss. If it were, the war could not outlast a year. This is fairly easy to show. The amount of fluid capital in the world is quite limited. J lie total amount of new flotations, both private and public, for all Europe averages rather less than four billions a year. And even this does not mean the actual borrowinfi of four billions clear. A considerable part of it is simply a turnover from one enterprise to another as, for example, the creation of a billion and a half of stocks and bonds in the formation of our great steol corporation. For this very little real money changed hands and surprisingly little new capital was actually raised.

The wealth of the world grows very slowly and the amount of real saving is amazingly small. If, for example, the wealth of the United States when George Washington became President was equivalent to a billion dollars (ana that perhaps is not a bad guess), ana this amount could have steadily earned a little over 5 per cent, every year since, this gain, compounded, would exceed the present estimated wealth of this country. This means that all the rest of the saving and the gains from new enterprises and a rapidly increasing population have only just about balanced the annual waste and loss. True, more than two-thirds of the wealth of nations is still the human machine and not the visible taxable property. But the fact serves to show how slight is the annual gain even in the premier get-rich-quick country of the world---the United States.

It would In' quite impossible, for example, for all the warring nations together to borrow and destroy fifteen billions of real capital in a single year. Nor could any nation in Europe pay out five billion* in a year from its current income. The great bulk of tlu> population all over the world —SO per cent, or more—lived at pretty near a minimum expenditure. You could not cut this clown, for example, by onethird, for if this were clone great numbers would starve. Now fifteen billions —five billions eaen for the three principal nations —is pretty close to one-half of their annual income. I have not included Russia, for no figures are available. Now. it is perfectly evident that there is no danger of starvation in any of these three countries, and I think it is easy to show that if their annual expenditure had. been cut down even 20 per cent., the war will represent an actual gain and no lo s s at all. This s due to the simple fact that the principal losses in war are confined to the decrease in the total production and to the property actually destroyed —ammunition burned up. villages destroyed, and the creation of property useless for other purposes than war—i.e., guns, etc. The actual income of each of the three nations runs not far from ten to fourteen bullion dollar* each. It is around twelve or fourteen billion dollars for Germany, a little less for England and France. Between 10 and 15 per cent, of these amounts means a round one and one-half billion dollars for each nation. The figures are only approximate. It is difficult to get at the actual income of any country, even that of the United States. In the United Stat's it ; s not far from 1000 dollars per average family of 47. In Germany and England it is probably a little less.

How, then, can it be said that the war is costing each of the nations something like five b ; Hion dollars a year? It is not. The larger part of the war expenditure is for wages of the men directly engaged, their feeding, transport "etc. They would have to be fed and clothed and housed in times of peace. If then the savings and the enforced economies of war amount to as much as as 15 or 20 pei cent., the actual direct loss : s compensated and the nation could go on until the number of killed and wounded had made a more serious inroad upon productive industry. The war cannot be stopped in the near future by the exhaustion of credit. That is clear. Germany and Au< tria, for example, have done no oiits'de borrowing: and they have little need. The funds they have raised so far have been spent within their own boundaries; it has been simply (dipping Peter to pay Paul. So long as they are not crippled industrially they can go on for a long time. Now, this crippling cannot come from any destruction of foreign commerce. The foreign trade of any ot the nations save England .nardly equals 10 per cent, of their total product. In the United States, or example, >t is only about 7 •ei ent.

Germany and Austria, taken together, now form a self-contained empire of 120,000,000 souls. 'J ne..' have the finest industrial e<|ii pment in Europe, and the best-organised and most effective government. Perhaps in tivo years they could !>e blasted out of Belgium and Northern France. But the would he terrific. Certainly the belief in a German "collapse," or the notion that the hosts of the Allies could ever unaided, enter Berlin or Vienna, belongs to the realm of irrideseent dreams. It is the belief of the writer that the A'.lies unaided could hardly wear down Germany in a four years' struggle. The Allies have but one hope in a straight-out contest. That is the powerful aid of the United States. We need not enter the war. But our fac tores can out-march the factories of Germany, and we can provide the Allies with munitions, and supplies. awf if need be with money. until Germany's insane dream of conquest H lew Hod to the dust. Nor can the writer see why we need have the slightest compunction about doing it. for it is merely a ouestion of whether we do it now or a little later. The triumph of German Imperialism now would' alniO'.t inevitably eventuate ; n n German-American conflict, in which the natural allv of Germany, in its lust to become the world power, would be Japan. It is conceivable that the end of the war may come from unexpected forces wheh no one perhipe save in the

invalided equalled a million more, this drain would have little effect. Half of the world's population is under 21 years of age. Out of the three or four hundred million of people now at war, tne number of young men who will have within the year become of militry age will far exceed the number killed and disabled. And jt is absurd to say that this means no reparat on of fighting strength, because wars have always been fought in large part by boys. FIGHTING WITH FACTORIES. If, then, neither unmatched "'preparedness,'' as in the case of the Germans, nor colossal numbers as in the case of the Rir-sians. nor the command of the sea, nor fighting qualities, nor capital requirements, nor any of the usual tosh and twaddle of the war " experts," seems to offer, either singly or taken altogether, a decisive clue as to the outcome of this imbecile struggle, what, it may lie asked, will be the determining factor P The answer here, as in probably every great war, is the industrial strength of the nations. Napoleon described the source of his own victories when lie said that God was on the .side of the biggest battalions. In his time France was the best equipped nation industrially in continental Europe. In our own day this must be changed a little to say that God is on the side of the biggest factories. In our Civil War the North won not because its soldiers were better fighters. They were not fighting for their homes, and in many ways the Southern troops were superior. It was not a mere question of numbers. The North won because it had the mills and mines, and could keep its industrial life going at an und:minished and, in point of fact, highly accelerated pace. It i 6 the industrial strength of Germany which holds the Allies at bay, and that strength, it is evident, America, and probably Europe, has woefully misprized. Taken to-day, Germany and Austria represent to-day industrial supremacy in Europe. They have the b'ggest iron mines, the biggest coal mines, the greatest output of iron and steel, and of all the manufactures allied with these, save perhaps, shipbuilding. Within the last 40 years there has come this amazing change. WHERE GERMANY NOW LEADS. When the Franco-Prussian War was fought, England was produc : ng more iron ore and manufactures of steel and probably more coal than France and Germany put together. To-day Germany is producing more pig-iron and steel than England, France, Russia, and Italy put together. And Germany is now in possession of all tne coal and iron of Belgium, and perhaps two-thirds of tna total product of France. The result is that in terms of a command of 'iron, the position of the Teutons to that of the Allies is about three to two. This cannot mean for Germany a shortage of guns or shells. And it means that, save for the exactions of war, this basic industry may run on practically normal lines. What is true of the iron trade is true of almost every other industry. The next most important division of manufactures is now the electrical industry, and here 40 years ago practically all the nations stood on an equal footing. For the first 20 years England, with her •superior organisation, had a long lead. Germany normally imports and manufactures half again as much copper as Great Britain, and her electrical machinery has steadily displaced that of England wherever the two have come in competition. The same story is told in the prodigious growth of Germany's foreign trade. Forty years ago the exports of Britain were nearly three times those of England. Whore Germany's trade abroad had increased nearly four times, that of England had increased only about 60 per cent. Again, since 1880, the t.tal receipts of German railways have gone up nearly four* times. That of Britain ha'- only about doubled.

Germany is yet far from rivalling the bankng power of England. But in 1876 the banking resources of Germany were almost negligible. In the interval these resources have multiplied nearly eighteen times. England's have hardly tripled. The industrial advance of Germany is para'leled in almost every field of human activity. Take education. Germany has 22 universities, with an enrolment of nearly 70.000, where England's 18 universities have but 35,000. The whole world has flocked to Germany's seats of learning. Germany lias 11 technical schools, with an enrolment of 16,000; and 32 other technical academies which increase this to above 22,000. The technical schools supported by public funds in Eng!and had in 1913 an enrolment of 1480 students. So, too, in the production of books. In Germany this runs around 35,W0 anually, as compared witli about 12,000 in Britain.

In 1909 telephone calls in Germany were 26 per head, as compared with 15 in England and 6 in Franco. In Germany the number of illiterates is neven-tenthe of 1 per cent.; and in England it is five times this. In Belg;um it is 15 times that of Germany. In the field of applied science Germany lias led the world. It is probably fair to say that the amount of industrial research in Germany and the importance of its results in the last 40 years have been equal to that of all the other nations, including the United States, comb : ned. In city planning and providing for the public comfort she lias had no rival. In 40 years this amazing people lias gone far towards wresting from England the primacy among the nations of Europe, as a hundred years ago England took the palm from France.

inside can reckon on. Just as, for example, a tack in his boot may wear down the strongest soldier, so a shortage of copper, lead, or brass, or some of the ingredients in the making of high explosives, might seriously cripple Germany's arms. It is certain that Germany would run 6hort of ammunition long before she would run short of food. She could not be starved out.

But the real ending of the war may very readily come from qu:te anothci direction. It may come from what was probably the most powerful single approximate cause. That is the strength of the Socialist movement in Germany itself.

Practically, then, tin 1 duration of the war depends on how long the tierman people w'll suport their Junker militarists in prosecuting it. The present expenditure means, for Germany alone, in the neighbourhood of 300,000.000 dollars a year in interest charges. The ante helium Government expenditure of Germany were helow one b'llion dollars and this represented not very far from 10 per cent, of the national income. Will the German people, when they see that any hope of war indemnities, or any kind of victory, is futile, stand for an additional 10 per cent, for war taxes? Tn ether words. w : ll they stand for a three years' war? This is possible, hut it seems rather doubtful.

NO PEACE TN SIGHT. Even under rather severe reverses the other countries would prohnhlv stand pat. To do anything else would ho suUide, and they know it. Against anv proispect of a triumph of German militarism the whole wide world would rise up. Practically, that is what it has already done. The turtle doves who Ri'trli for an unworthy pence may reflect that a prolonged war may accomplish a double end. It may mean the end of

The Socialist party is now the strongest political division in the German Empire. In forty years its vote has risen from an insignificcnt 3 per cent, of the total to 35 per cent. It elects all of the members of the Reichstag from Berlin save one; and practically all of the larger cities are represented by Socialist mambers. WHERE TAXATION PRESSES. The growth of the German Socialist vote has been uninterrupted. ?nd we have only to prolong the curve of this growth to see that in another five or six years the Socialists would have been in the majority, and the Junker control of Germany at an end. Without the capitalist and Junker dread of a Socialistic triumph, there could scarcely have been any war. The wave of war lust which swept Germany a year ago may be likened to a vast contagion. Before it the ideals of Socialism and Internationalism were as waving reeds. This fierce war sp:rit still burns, and so long as it does the chances of peace are small. But working steadily against it, is a powerful and steadily growing force. That is the weight of an intolerable burden of taxation.

This imbecile struggle, like every other war, is being financed with mortgages, for the simple reason that a war financed by direct taxation would never last six months.

By this scheme of indirect levy fifteen bullions or more for each year or the war will be drawn from the pockets of the thrifty. This will be paid, theoretically, by all the people. But who really pays? It is perfectly clear, to begin with, that it is next to impossible to tax capital very much. You may lot it with death duties and income taxes, but the moment these become serious there is an abrupt reduction in the revenue received. Capital is fluid, and the moment its average return is loaded too much in one state o:' country :t will flow to some other.

And no nation can stand thi-. Capital is the very blood of modem life. The savor is a really valuable member of society; it is curious to see how Governments have always protected cap ta| at almost any cost. Labour at a pinch can starve, and often docs, because it has not the same fluidity.

But capital will not starve, for it wou'd be moved elsewhere. This is th» lesson that every foray of popul'Mn or repudiation hah taught. Next, the great class of enterprisers, the builders and planners and venturers, cannot be made to pay too heavily. for if the attempt is made they too will be discouraged and go elsewhere, and the State will suffer. Finally there is the very lowest stratum, of the ne'er-do-wells and incompetents, 10, 20 per cent., living always just about at the starvation line. You cannot add greatly to their burdens. If you do they simply starve it Tttle more and die a little faster. To increase their numbers is ruination.

The people who can be male to pay are the larger middle class, the worker class, so-called, the day - wage and the farm population. These comprise 60 or 70 per cent, of the whole, and it is on tlmm that the burden falls. They will not starve and die, for they are strong and will work and they will get along if they can.

Now, this great worker cla ; s cannot I gain much from the war. Their wages do not much increase, and at any rate the cost of living goes up faster. Obviously they cannot save more under war conditions than in peace; and in times of peace—outs'de of the largest form of saving which is represented by the increase of the population—their savings amount to little.

HOW FAR CAN THEY GO? On the other hand, war almost invariably means paper money and inflation, and this means a corresponding rise in all kinds of real property, a fictitious activity in business, and tremendous chances for the capitalists and the enterprisers. For example, contractors of many types are profiting enormously by this struggle, and it is to be noted the bonds of Germany have already begun to sell at a considerable discount., and if the war keeps up these, and the bonds of the other nations as well, will probably sell down to a 10 or 12 per cent, basis, just as did our bonds in the Civil War. Why ? What is the risk? These nations arcsolvent and would be perfectly able to pay for a five years' war. The people who have the least to gain in this war and the people who will pay for the war are in the tremendous majority. They can rise up ana say: '"Th's is a capitalists' war, as all wars are. We have been ruthlessly saddled with a colossal debt for whii'i we have received nothing. We will not pay." The question is, how soon will the pinch come to force this great class to a realisation of the facts? At tVj present t : me the public mind of Germany is literally in a maniacal statp. Millions of people in Germany still believe that the Fatherland was "attacked" and "in danger." They would regard the proposal of disarming as monstrous. And whatever may be the rights or wrongs of the case, it is certain that Germany'n huge armaments and her supposedly invincible military power were mighty factors in bringing on the war.

the monarchical regime in Germany, which ius ptact cally staked everything upon this war. There are indeed many reasons to believe that the Junker crowd saw in the war the onlymeans of averting German democratisation. In point of fact it seems probable that an inglorious end of the war would ad.l enormously to the Socialistic vote and go a long way toward bringing about a German republic. This would almost certainly result in an explosion in Russa and the end of autocracy there.

With Czars and Kaisers banished there would be no further need of standing armies. Democracies do not make war one upon the other. But this prospect, however alluring, may be considerably postponed. The huge currency inflation which wars always produce has a hang-over effect so that the war, so far from producing direct exhaustion and collapse, will probably be followed by an era of high prices, high wages, and wild speculation such as followed our own Civil War. Th's should mean an enormous " boom" in the 'United States. The collapse will come after.

It is curious to reflect that this would fit in very well with what may in roughly described as the normal economic cycle. Was ; t pure chance that the war came just at the end of a huge world boom in business and just as the pinch of depression was coming severely to be fe-'t ? It is possible tii.it wars u-ually come in just such a trough and that, *o far from being eras of insane expansion, they are precisely the reverse, and strange as it may seem, represent a period of recuperation ?