The Lecture I Want to Deliver in Berlin.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 125, 24 December 1915, Page 4 (Supplement)

The Lecture I Want to Deliver in Berlin.

"I WOULD WILLINGLY RISK SIX MONTHS' INTERNMENT."

By HERBERT N. CASSON

1. Efficiency means doing a useful thing well Germany is not efficient because «he is doing an untueful thing well. 2. Efficiency means achieving a useful aim by the shortest road • w does not mean a short cut to bankruptcy ' Germany is not efficient, because all that she i 6 doing now is to nrepare with marvellous skill for the Official Receiver P the s&**£!** WheD * " ,eal;Sed at the e ' stimat «* «* •* the , ot .f e ?i Cient ' I' e fi U,SC She P L anned t0 «> n <l™ r Europe in 1.-if hrffS r > *•

Nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to be invited to lecture before the public of Berlin. The prospect of my receiving the necessary permission is admittedly rather remote, but I would willingly risk six months' internment in a German concentration camp to deliver my lecture. And this is what I should say to the people of Germany:

trespassing is efficient, for in the end , he will get shot in the leg. A business man who ends in the Bankruptcy Court cannot get his neighbours to believe that he was efficient, and that Js where you Germans are going to end, and no one will hold out a hand to save you, because it is known that you are I incapable or a lair ueal. jMuc.ency presumes tiie retention oi certain meuis. lou are a nation fao uevoiu oi meals that you do not dare I look yourselves in tne glass, whicii fa I wiry you suppress free speecii and ban ! a tree Press, lou woulu suppress hu- ! man thougnt it you could, Ulhciency assumes common sense, lou must noi uo anything absurd or grotesque; you must never become so scientiiic that you taKe a course alien to common sense, lou thought mankind would tolerate your ruie by might. | Finally, you Germans were not efficient because you had no conception or salesmanship. Salesmanship means to command favourable attention. The attention you have got in the war nao scarcely been favourable. The sinking of the Lusitania and the-Arabic, the murder of the sailors in El 3, the ravaging ot Zelgium—these got you attent on. but it was not the kind of atteuion any nation wants. Here is your great mistake! You have organised barbarism in the most wonderful way, using science to succeed where Atilla failed. You gave to his purpoae the machinery of the 20th century, but behind the machinery was still the same Attia. You went to war believing you were supermen; you are only madmen lusting to destroy the Homes that resist you. And you have the impertinence to talk to Great Britain, of her Empire policy. Compare , Egypt and Belgium. You have made j Belgium a blood-stained desert, and ' every man's hand is against you. Britan has uplifted a people in Egypt who were impoverished and oppressed, making them happy and contented, and ridding them of bankruptcy. Compare Canada with Alsace. How many Alsatians went joyfully to fight for you! It is natural, in view of your own failures, that you should envy Britain her successes, but you had it in your power to make Alsace just as contented as Canada, , What arc you Germans to do? Go read Darwin aga ; n. Find out what he meant by fittcvt to survive—not the most ruthless and the most brutal, but the best and most heipful of mankind. You thought that a nation was strong- ' est that emancipated itself most from the restraints of morality and human I kindness. You forgot that the great mammoths are extinct. The kindly dog survived because it can be loyal and honest and friendly to man; but the wolf slowly dies out because he is of the brood of Bernhard', inimical to mankind. $ * . # * # But my indictment of you is not jet 1 exhausted. You have proved' that you are temperamentally unfitted for power, your Empire has got co be i broken up afresh and the work of fifty years destroyed—that is the verdict of the world. Your Fleet must be taken away; no people so barbarous cat be allowed on the seas/ with engmes of destruction. Henceforth German submarines and men-o'-war will be rega ded as man-eating sharks. Krupps mast i be destroyed. We know it now to oe not a great centre of industry, out . merely a vast, organisation for killing ! Alsace-Lorraine, where the people lute you seventy times more intensely than the first day the German eagle waved over Metz or Strassburg, goes back to France. Schleswig, torn from Denmark, shall be restored that the wounu in the side of this peaceful nationality ' may be healed; Belgium must be compensated in acres torn from youi lihineland; 6hc must be made a BelI giuni twice as large at your expense—- ' a poetical sense of justice demands : nothing less. j "We Germans are so efficient." That was your boast, is still your boast today. How far it is removed from the truth. Efficiency avoids waste; you have encouraged waste. Never was there a nation so extravagant and wasteful in its) resources. You wasted all the good work you built up in fifty years. You had won secure markets in Russia, Belgium, France, Italy and Great Britain. To-day you find your- ' self kicked out and all five nations I united in eradicating any link between J themselves and German comerce. They are teaching themselves to do without Germany. j # » # * 1 A last word. What is the duty before a nation that has so debased itself? The past can never be atoned lor, but you can guarantee the future shall be different. Tiie guarantee of a better future lies in new management, in a board of directors, in a new and a neighbourly policy, in learning that one can be a good German and a good European at one and the same time. Before you can regain the world's good opinion you must repent; you must apologise; you must real : se the hor- { tor and the abomination of the thing you have done that cries out to Heaven for vengeance from the smoke of ruined homes and the funeral pyre of robust humanity; you must humbly prostrate yourselves at the feet of the nations and beg their pardon for having gone mad. So long act you remain in your present frame of mind, thinking well of yourselves, so long the world i will have to koep a wall round you as I around dangerous lunatics. —"Weekly Despatch.".

No thoughtful man can look upon Germany at this time without the most profound feeling of regret that a nation could so completely have lost its soul. You Germans were doing so well that the world held high hopes of you. After 2000 years of anarchy you had become an empire. Only half a century ago you were in 35 pieces; in Napoleon's day you were divided among yourselves, so that half of you fought with Napoleon and half against.

This country ot yours, Germany, had been a battle ground for a thousand years*. Three centuries ago the whole of Bavaria was in ruins and amid its desolation wolves and bears prowled. But contrary to general belief vou became an industrial people. You built factories, and, to the amazement of all Europe, you built laboratories, so that it seemed as if you were swinging from philosophy to science. Apparently after decades of war you were beating your sword into pruning hooks. You wore oil the peace badges, you went to all the peace conferences', you proclaimed peace, blessed peace, from the housetops. The world was sufficiently impressed to believe in your honest intentions. And then it ,was suddenly revealed that [t was all a sham, that your peace activities were really preparations for war.

You Germans betrayed the world's faith in you. It was argued from the higher standard of productive merit to which you were constantly striving that you were bent on a war of commercial supremacy rather than a war of military supremacy. Ten years ago your manufactures were cheap auu nasty; they became as good as your competitors . in spite oi tins tact you coiuin tted the supreme folly of making nut oil your 'jest custoiniis, tiroai i>i ita ii, m lug year oeiore tlic war, oougui iu minion pouuus North oi merciiauu.se iroin you; fiance, Italy and luu'sia were spieuuiu customers oi youifc. Hie inuusinai proiits that turned' your Jieads came horn the bale oi goous io tlie nations with whom you a;o now at war.

* # * Let me tell you a little story. In a small town where 1 happened to be, there was a cobbler who grew more and more jealous of his rival across the street. One night the cobbler got drunk, smashed the other man's windows, and ran amuck generally. He was dragged to the nearest loctv-up, friends asked him about the exploit no and the next morning fined. W hen ins remarked: " Well, it took three policemen to get me to the station." He didn't mind that h-S reputation was gone or his business ruined; the mam thought in his mind was that it took three policemen to drag him to the cells. The only consolation that you Germans will ever have —for you will never lose your habit of bragging—is that it took ten nations to get you down.

You have called yourselves efficient and successful. I tell you that you have been neither. First, what is success? It is the judgment which tne outside world passes on to you, not that which you take to yourselves. No nation can manufacture its own success, because it lives in a world of other nations, and it is from the world that success comes. You cannot make success in Germany, because you arc not a complete people. The human race outnumbers you twenty-five to one. Four per cent, of mankind cannot do what it likes; it is the other 96 per cent, that distributes success. And as to efficiency, you have abused its very meaning. That you planned this war so well does not prove that you planned it efficiently. Otherwise you would have won nine months Ago, and you will admit that you are 6till fighting. Efficiency must be judged by results; your supposed efficiency applied to this test is full of holes.

Smith, the brides' murderer, was not efficient, for though he laid his plans cleverer than any murderer in the last ten years, he swung on the scaffold in the end. He thought he was efficient, he was merely criminally cunning. Efficiency means doing something useful well. No poisoner can be efficient; he can be clever and you have said all. Efficiency is a higher percentage of results in a legitimate enterprise. You Germans are a self-deceived nation. You mistook cunning for efficiency, words for ideas, swank for culture, fear for loyalty, and Kaiserism for government.

*. * * * The nret principle of efficiency is a fair deal. The customer niubt be retained after the first transaction, and he will only stay if he feels he has' had a fair deal. It is not efficiency to make a guinea and lose a customer. Whittaker Wright cunning is not efficiency. You never gave Europe a fair deal. You went into this war with only yourself prepared, and you fell on your neighbours, on little Belgium, whom you had promised to protect. No trespasser can per6unde himself that his