GERMANY AT WORK.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 April 1921, Page 12

GERMANY AT WORK.

HUGE INDUSTRIAL MACHINE. ELIMINATION OF PRUSSIAN REGIME. After an extended tour of France, Belgium, and Germany, Mr. G. S. Martin, importer, of Sydney has returned to Melbourne. “Germany is rapidly recovering her commercial position,” said Mr. Martin in the course of an interview. “There is no division of opinion on the question. The whole population is working in unison. Workman and master seem to have tacitly agreed to regain their pre-war commercial supremacy. The transitory stages from war to peace conditions have already been passed, and trade is gradually expanding. Germany to-day is a huge industrial machine. Food is till scarce, otherwise conditions have almost returned to normal. “The elimination of the Prussian regime had wrought a marked revulsion in public feeling and aspirations,” Mr. Martin continued. ’'Phe swashbuckling bombast had entirely disappeared, and the dream of world dominion, for the time being at any rate, had giv»n place to a devotion to hard work. All Germany was at work producing and commercialising every available asset in the country,” said Mr. Martin. “Much more important, from the viewpoint of the present industrial unrest, was the fact that there were no strikes. This was not to say, however, that German workmen had forsaken their aim of obtaining better wages and industrial conditions. Trade unionism in. Germany was a very powerful and actitve organism. When differences arose between the parties a sane course was adopted. ‘Shop’ committees met representatives of the owners in conference and conferred until agreement was reached. In the meantime the work went on. There were no stop-work’ meetings. It was realised by union leader, workman, capitalist, and manager that production was the only hope of rehabilitating the country, of saving it from chaos; that strikes served no good purpose, either to the individual or the community; and the Germans were taking full advantage of the industrial conflicts which were ’affecting their competitors. No stretch of the imagination was needed to forecast the result, if such conditions as now existed in Germany were sustained for any length of time. While labor unions, Governments, and private employers in other countries were wrangling about wages, the German merchant was obtaining control of new markets, and regaining the trade from which he had been entirely cut off during the war.”