WAR NOTES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 147, 16 November 1914, Page 3

WAR NOTES.

AVIIAT GERMANY HOPED FOR. ! Modern Germany; lias been largely lmilt up of foreign capita). In war, if Germany is conquered the debt necessarily holds good. But if Germany wins, part of her reward of victory is the complete repudiation of all debts. Thus the glorious or inglorious prize of success would be, that all her vast industrial plant would be freed from every debenture and start with no encumbrance, a free present from the enemy. This example, they hope, would lead other na-tions-to do the same, and so still further ruin the finances of England and France, which are the great lending nations of the earth. They frankly admit that such a coup would make it difficult for these nations to borrow money again, but on the other hand, they would make such an immense profit over the transaction that they would be able to go on for many years without need for any more capital, "To secure so stupendous a result as this," said an American professor, "is well worth the expenditure of the money for building a fleet. That money, so far as the German nation is concerned, is merely invested in an enterprise from which they confidently expect returns perhaps a hundred-fold." As to the morality of this transaction, the professor, who has certainly no antiGerman bias, expresses their vews very plainly. It is the same as Frederick the Great's views as to the morality of the treaties which have descended with such fatal effect upon the successor of the Prussian throne. Once admit that such anti-social theories and these is no end to their application. Here it is in the domain of economics just as shameless as in that of politics. "Once more," says the professor, "the Germans hear around them our cries against the mortality of the procedure. The Germans refuse to recognise as moral anything -which jeopardises their national existence." They .are to be the judges of what these are, and if repudiation of debt is consideration to be one of them, then all debts may be repudiated. They will not put their views into practice this time because they will not be the victors, but when the reconstruction of Germany begins and she becomes once again as a chastened borrower in to the marketplace of the world it would be well to have some assurance as to how far she retains these views upon commercial morality. SHATTERED OPPORTUNITIES. But I have visions of a really chastened Germany, of. a Germany that has sloughed all this wicked nonsense, which has found her better self again and which is more than "dee)), patient Germany." She never enn he now what could easily r i!ave been. She could have continued indefinitely to extend from Poland to the 'Vosges .on vast community, honored by all for industry and learning, with a liujje commerce, a happy peaceful, prosperous population, and a Colonial system, wnich if smaller tlvan that! of nations which wojre centuries: older in

minions and in Groat Britain herself an ~. entry ; f6V'hoi':products as free as if she were herself part of the Empire, All this must lie changed for the worst and it is just that she should suffer for her sins. The work of GO years will be .destroyed. But will not the spiritual .Germany ho the better and stronger! We can but hope and wait and wonder. What is sure is that the real Germany of whom Carlylc spoke, can never be destroyed. Nor would we desire it. Our wrath is not against Germany, but against that Krupp-Kaisor-.lunkor combination which has brought her to such a deadly pass.—Sir Conan Doyle.