UNITED STATES ALL OUT FOR THE TRADE WAR.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 13 February 1917, Page 2

UNITED STATES ALL OUT FOR THE TRADE WAR.

FEVERISH PREPARATIONS.

TO CAPTURE WORLD'S MARKETS,

TEe United States are rapidly preparing for the war after the war—the struggle to capture the world's markets.

"I have just spent two months in America," said a London business man to a "Weekly Despatch" representative, "and I can tell you that we shall have to wake up. The American—especially of the cosmopolitan varietyis thinking and working at express speed. And the American Government is smiling with approval upon him, and is backing him with a first-class intelligence system.

"Every American Consul, wherever he is, will soon have at least two smart trained business young men on his staff. They will know all there is to know about American systems before they go to him. When they do they will be ' bound apprentice' for a period during which they will have to learn the language of the country in which they work and know the psychology of the people. "I was in an office one day doing business when I mentioned the name of a man who had recommended me to them.

« 'Never heard of him,' said the principal. He touched a button; the next moment a man entered. 'Here,.' said the principal, 'get a line on Blank; everything about him from his birth to the present, and let me have your report by ten o'clock to-morrow morning.' '' The man was gone in a moment. The next morning ho laid on his chief's table a complete biography of the hitherto unknown man. A PRICE ON PASSPORTS. "There is no rest for the Englishman doing business in New York. He must be ever vigilant. I was warned as soon as I got there not to carry my passport with me or I might be robbed for that alone. So it reposed in the hotel safe until I was ready to leave. "Plausible men whom I met in business talked about passports with much meaning in their voices. One pointblank suggested that he might have a loan of it. British passports are worth money to the unscrupulous. "Another man approached me —after talking about commonplace things — with a question about the solicitor of a gentleman in this country exereing control over exports from a certain neutral country where some machinery which he had paid for was detained. Did I know the solicitor? he asked, and then begged me to employ him to do my work and so work upon him that he would induce the all-powerful to free his machinery for export. There were a few thousand hanging to the successful completion of the business. I refused to touch it.

"In New York you do not know who's -who in the business world. The first and last consideration is dollars. 'lf yon British weren't masters of the sea, for sure we 'd sell shells to Germany if she paid more for them than you would,' said one.

"They know really nothing about the war, these business men. Too busy, they say. They grumbled about our interference with their mails, and not until I had told them of the little babies killed by Zeppelins did they modify the denunciation of our interference. Then they roundly cursed Germany. "Then they protested against our interference with their cargoes. Until I told them they had never heard of ships' manifests which described bladders of lard as bottles and other little stories of the vigilance of our naval patrols. "Germany is advertised all over there. If advertising in its most insidious form could make America proGerman Count Bernstorff would have accomplished that long ago. The American believes in advertising, and Count Bernstorff, according to what I have seen of his work, is the greatest advertising agent in the world. England is right out of the business. The New Yorkers do not understand this reticence. They would believe in Great Britain's power if a man with a gigantic megaphone shouted from Flat Iron Building every day some story favourable to Britain.

"They told me about the Irish exhibition in New York into which tens of thousands Germans swarmed to have the pleasure of shooting at dummy British soldiers, the greatest attraction in the exhibition to the Germans.

"In the presence of an Englishman the hyphenated are good listeners, and as I never talked in their presence about the war or anything to do with it, they got nothing out of me. "It is a pity some of our English there talk so much and are so careless.

"When I was returning I was standing on the landing-stage with a Canadian friend who drew my attention to two portfolios stuffed with papers lying on a seat unguarded—no one near. These were marked 'Ministry—, Whitehall, S.W.'

"God help the dear cffl country/ said my Canadian friend, 'if this is the way her secrets are guarded here.'

"ALWAYS ON MY GUARD." "On the way home I met many people, and here, again, I was always on my guard. But there was one American official among the passengers who ma&e merry about the shortcomings and the dilatory and even sleepy attitude of some of our officials over there. "Just before we got home, on the day when luggage not wanted was hoisted on deck, two trunks fell overboard as the ship gave a lurch. "Some British officers came up shortly afterwards —I had not known them as officers on the voyage—and I remarked that they had just missed seeing two trunks go overboard. "One was considerably disturbed. 'I hope,' he said, in a burst of foolish confidence to me, who was really a stranger to him, 'that they're not mine for I've got some new in them.' "Later, when a trawler or patrol boat came alongside, the same officer shouted more of his business over the side. i "I was absolutely amazed at these indiscretions. When we landed, one , man came off handcuffed, tAvo were detained, and two more were informed that England was not a healthy country for them. "I do not wonder at the Government rigidly supervising the goings and com ings of Trans-Atlantic passengers. Sry two months' trip convinced me that it is absolutely necessary, and that the screw should be put on tighter still."