New-York tribune., 1918-08-03

ing our great transportation system
and perhaps our extremely efficient
wire system bureaucratized after the
war. There would be a great and i'm
mediate falling off in efficiency with
out the spur of war to make national
effort rise to its greatest heights.
There has been but one state rail-
road whose efficiency of management
has compared with that Of our great
privately owned and operated lines.
That one, Of course, is the Prussian
system, and it's efficiency has been due
to the fact that it has been essentially
private corporation, however masked
by being called state railroad.
But, as l pointed out in "The An
nalist" of July %, 1918, in an article
called "a Plea for Economic National
Defence" we shall have the same neces-
sity Of national action after the war
as now, though the necessity will not be
so dramatically apparent. Unless Ger
many is absolutely crushed "a con-
summation devoutly to be wished, but
by no means certain Of attainment
all her resources will be used, as
heretofore, to market her goods as
effectively as possible In order to gain
control of the markets of the world
and to buy her raw materials as cheap
ly as possible through her cartel
system ruthlessly and unscrupulously
applied. And I am not of those who be-
lieve in the efficacy of boycotts. They
cost too much, and the bitterest
hatreds have q way Of vanishing in
the face Of personal advantage. Ger
many is not more productive than
the United States, but she is better
organized.
England has been proposing plans
for initiating something of this organ
ization, for self defence-free trade
England considering the possibility of
preferential tariffs, etc. And, as Mr..
Douglas points out, the Labor party
in England regards as unthinkable
the return to private ownership Of the
transportation facilities now con-
trolled by the government" though
the ship owners are singing different
song, and no one knows which side will
win. The problem for England as we'll
as for ourselves, both democracies, is
to combine national efficiency with the
individualism which makes for initi-
ative and progress, rather than the
stagnation that is almost inseparable
from bureaucratic control.
1T one advocates continued govern
mental control--not ownership-of the
railroads and the whole transporta-
tlon system, it is not as a Socialist
necessarily nor as a purely theoretic
economist, but because, without ma
tional unification of interests, we shall
inevitably be beaten in the economic
struggle. If the world could know
OF Germany's economic methods as
exposed by Heauser and Gourvich and
our Department of Commerce it would
be as much startled and shocked as it
has been by tardy recognition of her
deliberate methods of warfare.
1t ought not to be impossible to
unity public opinion in America for
after the war conditions. 1t is not
impossible; but in order to bring this
about there should be a campaign of
education inaugurated to inform the
people Of the desperate need of eco
nomic self defence. Sherman acts
would disappear and government con-
trolled activities would be conducted
with patriotic passion. But we post
pone study, propaganda and defence,
always thinking our forte to lie in
brilliant improvisation; and improvi-
sation has all but cost US civilization.
For civilizations sake let US have no
more blindness to the character and
the "tenacity" Of our still unbeaten
adversary.
GEORGE CLARKE COX.
New York, July 20, 1913.