The Washington herald., 1918-03-01
An Appeal to the Busine.. Men Of Germany.

1t is strange to hear anybody talk about the
business men of Germany.
We had almost forgotten that there were such
persons The papers are filled with talk about the
Junkers the mitarists the landed aristocracy, the
Social Democrats, the Centrum, the Laborites of
Germany; but that powerful industrial class of
which Albert BalIin is the prototype has all but
been forgotten in the analysis of the internal fer
ment in Kaiserdom.
1t has remained for the Chamber of Commerce
OF the United States to resurrect what was, before
the war; potentially the most powerful class in Ger
many So powerful was it that more than one
psychologist of the war has attributed the anxiety
of Junkertum force hostitfes in 1914 to the fact
that it recognized the domination of Germany by
the industrial barons as certain to within the
next decade-unless threw the nation back into
the military camp. Yet German capital has praG
tcaly been of the reckoning for the past three
years The war has wrecked the whole industrial
fabric of Germany and ruined its foreign trade; yet
the business man has been impotent to assert him
self against the military masters of the country.
The Chamber of Commerce has issued inn
portant appeal the German business class. 1t
declares that "the American people, for the purpose
OF preventing excessive armament after the war,
will assuredly enter economic combination
against Germany if governmental conditions in
Germany make it necessary for self-defense," and
that "the size of Germanys future armament will
depend fundamentally her after-war receipts OF
raw materials and profits from her foreign trade.
Then it asserts that 1--WE believe that the American
people will not join in discrimination against Ger
man goods after the war if the danger OF excessive
armament has been removed by the fact that the
German government has in reality become re-
sponsibe instrument controlled by the German
people" and it therefore resolves that "the atten-
ton of the business men of Germany be called to
these conditions and that they be urged to study
this situation and to cooperate to the end that
disastrous economic be averted and that
lasting peace may be made more certain"
If this is not a clear warning of the fate that
awaits German business unless the nation is purged
of its cancer of autocracy we do not know what
it is
If this does not spell certain doom for un-
repentant and unreformed Germany, regardless OF
the fortunes of her armies, do not know what
it does.
Consider, also, the steps that the American gov
ernhlent is about to take to kill the resources OF
German trade in this country-the conhscation OF
the Hamburg g-American docks, for instance. Is it
any wonder that the Kaiser breads the economic
weapon in the hands of his enemies more than he
does their armed legons; that his evident anxiety
that there shall be no "war after the war has
already received abundant expression?
If the business of Germany will get rid OF
the incubus of Prussiansm that monstrous parasite
will find the descent to Avernus easy.
What is the caliber and character of the indus
trial and commercial forces of the central empires?