HOW KRUPP'S SOLD GERMANY.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 January 1916, Page 8

HOW KRUPP'S SOLD GERMANY.

THE HAND OF THE "PROFITEER." In the fulness of time the people of Germany will realise that their fleet has been run not so much as an instrument of war, but ra'lher as a means of swelling the income of the Krupp family. There is already a large body of people there to whom the great armament firm is known as a corporation of "Panzerplat-ten-patrioten"—armour-plate patriots, who demand a big fleet solely that they may make profits out of providing it. But Krupp's have done worse than that. Having the equipment of the navy in their own hands, and enjoying the reputation of being the greatest artillery expert* of the age, they have furnished Germany with a fleet of battleships, in whose design the hand of the "profiteer" is everywhere visible. If you take a picture of any German battleship built within the last twenty years (says the London Magazine) you ivill find that she fairly bristles -with guns. Every available position is occupied by an llin, a 0.7, or 5.9, and the .onallcr guns especially are often bunch .id together in the most amazing man iicr. That they would interfere seriously with each oiher in action does not seem to have mattered. That a single shell bursting among them might instantly put half a dozen guns out of business has weighed for nothing. The Diisiness of the gun-makers was to get rid of as many guns as they could, for every one sold brought more marks to the till.