Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1928-11-11

! ministry with its one wide-spreading
maple, and watch the solitary sentinel
moving slowly back and forth along the
| path, with two old cannon lying in the
sunlight on the lawn.
| Beyond the quiet beauty of this scene
| however, there was a high factory
| chimney in full view, like a constant
| reminder of the purpose of the new de-
| partment, recalling the factories of in
dustrial Germany.
THE task said Rathenau, twas first
to envisage and then to organize this
world of Steaming furnaces, of glowing
rolling mills or whirling spindles, to
dominate it by single will and bring
its titanic might from peaceful purposes
| to those of war;"
Compare this picture with the days OF
Frederick the Great; imagine the caval-
ry captain coming into village to ask
| for oats for his horses and bedding for
his men, and then riding off in the
morning with his little company of SOL
diers, self-contained unit of military
| force. The thing which lay between
Frederick the Great and Ludendorff
was the revolution in industry which
had also industrialized war.
Plan Dominated Germany.
Before the World War was over the
department of raw materials of the
German foreign Office had become SO
large and important a body as almost
to rival the war ministry itself, and the
"Rathenau plan" of industrial mobiliza-
ton dominated not only German in
dustry, but that of Belgium and every
other source of supply which was avail
able to the central powers.
Over in England things went more
slowly. All the world knows that after
the stunning blow of the first surprise,
when Britain found itself at war, it
pulled itself together in the succeeding
weeks under a slogan which was a de-
NAL of all that DR.. Rathenau foresaw
for Germany: Business as usual" 1t
took England about two years of awful
sacrifice before it learned the change
that had come over modern war; the
scandal of the lack of high explosives,
the failures of the western front from
Hooge to the Somne.
But once 1t had learned the lesson,
England applied it with British thor
oughness until the little supply depart
ment of the war Office had grown from
score of clerks to $4,000 administra-
tors and 100000 workers in the ar
senals of Britain. Nor was this all.
The whole world was drawn upon for
the raw materials as we'll as the fin
ished instrument of war, and the mer-
chant shipping of Britain that carried
these supplies from overseas was an es-
sential part of q transport service that
led directly to the British front. Be-
hind it all, the concealed but still more
potent energies of finance directed,
stimulated and controlled the output.
Situation in the United States.
Nowhere else, however, was this in
duStrial aspect of modern war so evil
dent as in the United States, which. for
over two years and a half of the Eu-
ropean conflict came in contact. only
with the business needs of the belliger-
ents. It is strange, therefore, that the
full meaning of this change in warfare
should not have been seen at once in
its bearing upon the two peace time
problems which are connected with it
that of ornaments and that of the
movement for international peace in the
proper sense of the word.
The point is simply this: War no
longer moves only in the direction of
the armies in the field: on the contrary,
1t reaches out in all directions wherever
supplies may be found or workers can
be organized or finance can stimulate
| industry. It no longer halts at the
| boundaries of even neutral states, but in
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