WAR THE ENERGISER.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 October 1915, Page 12 (Supplement)

WAR THE ENERGISER.

THE COMING GREAT "BOOM." MISTAKES OF THE KAISER. (By Herbert Casson, in a lecture to the London 'Luncheon Club). lam an optimist. Optimism pays. If you don't believe it, look at Lloyd's, baaed wholly on optimism, making more money than any of us, millions out of cur fears and apprehensions. Whenever you are anxious about a thing happening, Lloyd's say "Come on, we'll bet you 500 to one it won't happen," and Lloyd's get rich. They know the cash value of optimism. If you are worried about Zeppelins, go to Lloyd's. They'll bet you 500 to one you are not struck. They are business optimists.

There was a boom after the Napoleonic wars. In twenty years Britain became the richest nation in Europe. There was a boom after the Crimean War and the Boer War and the American Civil War. In eight years 30,000 miles of Tailroad were built in America. After the Spanish-American War we had the era of big trusts and industrial combinations. Why booms? Not because of war. War is all waste. War is loss and disaster and horror and death. Not because of victory alone; both Germany and France prospered after the war in 1870. Booms follow war because war is the greatest energiser in the world. There is no tonic like it. It speeds men up. It makes men 100 per cent, instead of 20 per cent. The average man is only one-fifth alive. War stirs up latent forces.

After the war a clear track. No more penny-in-the-slot business. This is a day of big things, and we have got to get the larger imagination into our shops and factories, to appreciate more thoroughly than we have ever done efficiency and enterprise. We have a dear track. The order is "Full speed ahead." Nothing can stop us except the Day of Judgment. "Full speed ahead," I say. The glory of the past has only been a prelude. Waterloo was only a curtainraiser. The real drama of the British Empire is just about to begin.

Germany went up like a rocket; she will come down like a stick. There was a South Sea bubble—it exploded. Ger-j many's North Sea bubble will explode just in the same way. We see Germany's third explosion maturing. First she exploded and destroyed Rome, that was in the sixth century; second, she destroyed European commerce with the Hanseatic League, that was in the sixteenth century; to-day she is exploding Austria, Turkey and herself. When did the German fall begin! When she sank the Lusitania. That moment Germany forgot that she belonged to the human race; the German Empire became an impossible tiling—it had to be destroyed. Germany became the outlaw nation, the mad dog of Europe. The hour that the great floating hotel went to the bottom, a vietim of German brutality, and all the schools in Germany rejoiced, that hour the thought of anv alliance with, or iolerivtion of, the existence of, the German Empire perished. The German Empire had an end.

If Germany wins, it is the end of civilisation. Lights out! Dark Ages again. As the Dark Ages came when.the Huns destroyed the Roman Empire,' so they would come again if the Lusitania is to be the trade-mark of the German Empire. How did Germany rise? Not by brutality. By science, by organisation. She rose by headwork, and she shall fall for lack of heart. Germany developed only her mind and methods; she never developed her feelings. Therein note a lesson for us business men. The only way to rise without falling again is to have efficiency, plus kinduess and fair play. Rather than have cold-blooded efficiency alone and the deadly thrust all the time, I would live on acorns if I might be kindly and loving to my fellow-men. Efficiency, yes; but efficiency coupled with kindness and humanity and the desire to make men better, *

German culture has always been a veneer. In 9 A.D. the Romans were driven out of Germany. Germany was never Romanised. France was Romanised. England was Romanised. Germany remained a great, uncouth, powerful giant, cramped up in the middle of Europe; cunning, industrious, brutal, greedy, always thinking "Why can't I he the boss of the world? Why should these slow, good-natured English rule the seas and possess colonies everywhere? lam stronger and better organised than they are. I have organised by foreign trade; not even begun to think about it." If Germany had stuck to business and let the war alone she could have bought the world. She had built up the greatest manufacturing and selling organisation ever known. Let us take a lesson both from how she rose and how she shall fall.

Germany built up a great automatic machine, but German success ruined German character. Germans began to believe all praise and flattery. Trouble came with too much Geist. They came to regard themselves a s supermen—a herd of purple cows breaking the fences and running around. No wonder, they had beaten France in war and Great Britain in commerce. Success turned their heads. The world was made for Germany, they whispered to themselves, and slowiy they prepared the Great Plan:— Conquer the Slavs. Annex the Balkans and Turkey. Build a German railroad to the Persian Gulf. Crush France. Annex Belgium. Control China. Conquer Britain. Terrify the United States. Secure the world market. For ten years they worked on this great plan while Lord Haldane was in the next room talking about the Zeitgeist and the Sittlichkeit. They built a thousand miles of the railway to the Persian Gulf. Trains are running on the railroad to-day from the Bosphorus to the Persian Gulf. It was a private railway, they_ told our Government. As if anything under German control could be private! In Germany not even a man's conscience is private. Germany had six dreams:— (I) The North Sea dream: We will march to the se*

(2) The Austrian dream: Wo will swallow up the Hapsburgs and annex Austria-Hungary. (3) The Balkans dream: Berlin to the Bosphorus. (4) The Asia Minor dream: A Holy German Empire. Why did the Kaiser go on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem? To pathfrad for his armies. (5) The African dream: The ultimate land of raw materials. (6) The Chinese dream: The ultimate workshop. Think of the African and the Chinese dreams! In the one aH the raw materials necessary; in the other 450 millions of people to run the workshop. All this while we fiddled away in a fool's paradise;' talking about Welsh Disestablishment and Home Rule and Votes for Women and Redmond riots and Belfast stomach-ache. Give every Irishman a Parliament, leave him nothing to fight for, then he will turn and whack his wile. ( Our watchmen, while the great plan was maturing, cried "Peace! Peace!" We had a secret service, cost us £50,000 a year, and it remained secret; it didn't tell u3 anything. It was the most secret secret service the world has ever known; knew all about what was going on, but said nothing. The only thing thai will save us ia: Germany has made worse mistakes than we have done. Here are Germany's mistakes:—

(1) Bismarck tactics don't require a Bismarck. They do. The Kaiser is no Bismarck. His grain is not fit for the job. (2) Gentle nations cannot fight. Belgium proved that a lie, as Germany knew the first eight days. Belgium was to be overcome merely by the Germans saying "Ah." They said "Ah" at Liege, and Liege murdered them. There is nobody worse than a quiet man once you get him started. Everybody in a bar knows that. The quiet man has always got the worst knuckles. He doesn't talk, only hits you. (3) Britain will remain neutral. Britain didn't. (4) Violence is power. It isn't. (5) Fear rules the world. It doesn't. (6) German nature is human nature—other nations can be dominated as Germans are. They cannot. (7) The Golden Rule is sentimental nonsense. It is not. (8) The fittest to survive are the most ruthless. It is a lie.

The Kaiser became the supreme Faust of the world, Faust was the character he was always Studying. He sold his soul to the devil for one mad year in which to gain the whole world. He committed the unspeakable crime of taking 70,000,000 people who loved him and hurling them into the bottomless pit of disaster and ruin. No one can'realise this war; it we could, our brains would burst. But one fact is clear; Germany rose by efficiency; she falls because she sinned against the higher law—live and let live. The fall of Germany means a new world with Germany spinncd on the ground. We have to get ready for big business.