Meantime, what are the facts?
Take the case of England. Thirty years ago she was the workshop of the
world. From the Tyne to the Thames her factories hummed with ceaseless
industry. Her goods went wherever her ships steamed, and that meant the
globe. Supreme in her insularity--at once her defence and her
undoing--she became infected with the virus of content. Her steel was
the best steel; her wares led all the rest. "Take it or leave it!" was
her selling maxim. When devices came along that saved labour and
increased production she refused to scrap the old to make way for the
new. Born, too, was the evil of restricted output. Moss began to grow on
her vaunted industrial structure. England lagged in the trade
procession.
But as she lagged the assimilative German streamed in through her
hospitable door. He served his apprenticeship in British mills; took
home the secrets and methods of British art and craft. He geared them to
cheap labour, harnessed product to masterful distribution, and became a
World Power. Before long he had annexed the dye trade; was competing
with British steel; was making once-cherished British goods.
What the German did in England he duplicated elsewhere. The world of
ideas was his field and, with insatiate hunger, he garnered them in. He
cunningly acquired the sources of raw supply, especially the essentials
to national defence; for he overlooked nothing. All was grist to his
mills.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25