Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1921-12-20
THE TRAGEDY OF ENGLAND
By DR.. Frank Crane

What follows is substantially an interview
with an American fnancier who recently
made a tour throughout England and Europe
| and carefully studier conditions in the va
r1ous countries. He is conservative-minded
man of mature judgment and not at all given
to coloring facts with the enthusiasm of a
preconceived theory.
I have been all through Central Europe
and Western Europe and England, he said,
and while conditions elsewhere are bad
enough, lit seems to me that conditions in
England are most threatening.
I should not be surprised that England is
going to furnish the great tragedy of the
future.
The facts upon which I base this SUPPOSE
ton are quite simple and we'll known.
There are some 100000 people in Great
Britaip and Ireland. This population can not
support itself upon the land. They are abso-
lutely dependent upon selling their manu-
features abroad and of importing their means
of subsistence from abroad.
America could get along by itself, and,
locking out the rest of the world, it has ter
ritory enough to support it's people for many
years to come.
France also might be self-sufficient
England is not self-suticient. 1t is a mat
ter of life and death to her that her ships
should carry her manufactured products and
bring back her food and raw materials.
The existing collapse in exchange strikes
her more deadly blow than any other coun-
Of other lands renders it more and more diff
| ficult for them to buy her goods >or send her
supplies.
By the terms of the armistice she is fore
| Ing Germany to an export activity which
threatens her own markets very seriously
Germany used to be one of her best custom
| ers, and by the decline of the mark, that
market is closed to her.
| OF course, Great Britain has her colonies
but in a crisis like this, while they might be
I,0JN
much in the condition Of the rest of the
| world. Tor it costs Great Britain quite as
| much to get a sack of -four from Canada as
from Minnesota. The same conditions thai
are Gripping her business with other ma
lions cripple her business with her own col
onies.
| The usual answer to this sort of argument
is that Great Britain will middle through
somehow. She may All things are possible
and no one knows what is coming next. But
| If present tendencies continue and the gen
eral scheme of things is unchanged, there
seems to be nothing ahead of Great Britain
| but disaster.
When I spoke Of these things to prominent
Germans they were received with incredulity
They could not understand how Great Brit
| ain after her victory in the war should bt
even in a worse condition than Germany
But when I spoke of them to the leading
fnanciers of Great Britain I found they were
not at all surprised and they ever went me
one better.
The unemployment in Great Britain il
very menacing and the condition of tn
working classes is deplorable.
The only cure for the trouble is to b.
found in world organization and in some sor
Of an adjustment of relations between tn
various nations as shall break down the bar
riers of commerce and enable the shuttle
of trade again to lily smoothly.
Some concert of the nations, based upo1
the interests of all the world, may be goot
thing for other countries, but for Great Brit
ain it is matter of life and death.
i Copyright, 1921, by Frank Crane.)