Semi-weekly herald., 1914-08-24
ANGLo-GERMAN ANTAGONIST.

AN6LO-GERMAN ANTAGONIST. |
This precipitation of the conflict
acts to the disadvantage of Germany,
for that conntry was growing strong
er and France and England relative
ly weaker ever year that peaceful
competition continued. When Ger
many conquered. France in 1870 these
two countries weress pretty nearly
evenly matched in population; now
Germany has sixty-nine million to
France 81 thirty mine and Epgland's
forty-six million. Germany is increas-
ing in population at the rate or IA
per cent each decade, the United
Kingdom at the rate of per cent,
while in France the deaths outnum-
ber the births in some years. If Ger
many. had been allowed to continue
her progress unchecked by such dis
asters AS the loss of $4,000 young men
at Liege, she would before long have
outnumbered both France and Eng
land.
| The United Kingdom loses every
year between two and three hundred
thousand men by emigration, and
these among the best she breeds, for
the dominions oversee will accept no
others. Germany, on the contrary,
has checked the outflow of her peo-
pie and is attracting immigration.
Rural England is being depopulated,
and soon it seems there will be left,
as Chesterton says, only the village
idiot Year by year more land in the
British Isles goes out Of cultivation
and is given over to grass or game
Germany, however, is developing her
| agricultural resources and is enabled
not only to feed her own people, but
part of England's, selling her every
year, for instance, n million dollars
, worth of eggs and half million of
potatoes. In England pauperism has
alarmingly increased and the army of
the unemployed grows more menac-
ing. Germany, meanwhile, by her
system of industrial legislation and
insurance, has gone far toward solv-
ing these social problems. Among
the thousands Of Americans now ma
rooned in Germany, many were there
to study the German methods of mu-
nicipal management, model housing
and technical education. For all her
heavy expenditure to support her
great army and navy the public debt
of Germany is only SIS per capita,
while that of England is $50 and that
of France $3.50.
1t was, in fact, because the Ger
mans were the first to apply modern
scientific methods to administration,
industries and commerce that they
have beaten the English, who, with
all their admirable qualities, are de-
ficient in this respect, as they them
selves have frankly recognized.
France was beaten in 1870, according
to the old saying, by the German
schoolmaster.- England found herself
being beaten by the German school
master in fields she had once held to
be her own. Chemistry in its early
days was called "a French SCIENCE;
later England led the world in chemi-
cal manufactures; but recently Ger
many has been rapidly monopolizing
it. The world has been paying Ger
mans s300,000,000 a year for the
dyes, the drugs and the perfumes
which they have learned to make.
utilizing coal tar and the like that
other countries threw away. And now
the cotton. mills of England and the
United States are closing down be-
cause they cannot get the German
dyes. One German discovery alone,
synthetic indigo, brought ruin upon
an important. industry of British In
i dia.
But 1t was when Germany took to
the sea and began ousting England
from the markets of the world that
British apprehension changed to
alarm. Between 1880 and the pres
ent time the value Of foreign COM
merce per capita Of England increas-
ed by about so per cent, but that of
Germany increased by $50 per cent.
Hamburg and Antwerp, both built by
German trade, have outstripped Lon
don in their shipping. No British
line Of steamers can surpass the
Hamburg American, which had 20
vessels in 1867, but has now 439,I
minus such as have been sunk by
British cruisers in the past fortnight.
Great Britain has not been able even
to hold the trade of her own colon
les, in spite Of patriotic appeals and
devices for imperial preference. Year
by year a greater percentage of the
trade Of Australia, New Zealand mad
India went to Germany instead of to
the mother country.
Thirty years ago Germany deter
mined that she needed colonies of her
own for her growing population and