“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” In the realm of shipping it has always been customary for each company to profit by the experience gained and the progress made by its competitors. This applies to the Packetfahrt and its management also; but in their case they have given infinitely more than they have received, and in the whole history of shipping there has never been one single person who has exercised a more stimulating influence on its technical progress than Albert Ballin.
CHAPTER VIII
Politics
Notwithstanding the many business controversies in which Ballin took an important part, it has occasionally been said that he was not really a “fighter.” This statement may be allowed to pass quite unchallenged, provided that by the term “fighter” we mean a man whose habit it is to fight to the bitter end. Ballin never indulged in fighting for its own sake, nor was it ever his object to see his vanquished opponent lie prostrate before him. Such a mental attitude he, in his own drastic way, would have described as a “perverted pleasure.” Always and everywhere it was his aim to secure to himself and to those he represented the maximum benefit obtainable consistent with the realities of the situation, so that he has been justly described as “a man of compromise.”
This feature of his personality, indeed, forms the key-note both to his policy and to the principles on which it was based. Perhaps in other spheres of economic activity it is possible for a struggle between two competing rivals to end in the complete victory of one of them; in the shipping business such an outcome is the exception but not the rule. There a really weak opponent is never met with, unless one’s rival happens to be exceptionally inexperienced or constitutionally unsound. The minor competitor, where shipping is concerned, is by no means always the less powerful of the two. On the contrary, the contest which inflicts small losses on him inflicts heavy losses on his big opponent, and may easily exhaust the latter first. The last few decades have witnessed the establishment of many new shipping firms under the auspices of national sentiment. Governments and whole peoples have backed them, and in such cases private undertakings have found it difficult to compete.
During his early training Ballin had so thoroughly convinced himself of the necessity for co-operation and compromise in matters economic that this conviction became the corner-stone of his policy. He also made it his principle never to tie an unwilling partner to an agreement which the latter considered to be detrimental to his vital interests, and he would only approve of an agreement if both parties to it felt satisfied that they had done a good stroke of business by concluding it. The numerous “community of interest” agreements to which he signed his name established, the longer they lasted and the further they were extended, an increasingly intimate contact between the shipping firms all over the world, thus proving that the consistent application of his principles was justified by its success.
In politics, too, he regarded this line of action as the only correct one. Over and over again he described the World War as a “stupid war” or as the “most stupid of all wars,” because its origin, the conflict between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, was so utterly meaningless to the progress of the world. Its actual outbreak was caused by the strained economic relations between Hungary and Serbia, or—to put it quite plainly—by the boycott of the Serbian pig, a matter which was surely of no importance to the world’s trade and traffic at large. “No Bismarck was needed to prevent this war,” he often said when speaking of its immediate origin.
This attitude of his does not mean that he shut his eyes to the deep-seated antagonisms which were at the back of these local squabbles, viz., the Franco-Russian coalition against Germany, and the Anglo-German rivalry. The latter he regarded as sufficient to turn the scale; if it could be adjusted a World War, he felt sure, would be avoided. The possibility of a universal conflagration had been pointed out to him by no less an authority than Prince Bismarck on the occasion of the latter’s visit to Hamburg, when he was shown over the express steamer of the Packetfahrt that was to bear his name. “I shall not live to see the World War,” Bismarck told him; “but you will, and it will start in the Near East.”
With ever-increasing anxiety, Ballin noticed how, as a result of the German naval armaments, the Anglo-German antagonism came into existence, and how in time the position became worse and worse. When the Government, about the year 1900, embarked upon its propaganda for the creation of a big navy, he lent it his active assistance, but in later years he strongly opposed the naval race with Great Britain, trying to the best of his ability to circumvent its disastrous consequences.
The British argument against Germany’s naval programme was that a nation which owned one-third of the inhabited globe and intended to maintain its supremacy could not renounce its naval predominance. His knowledge of British mentality—gained, as it was, through many years of intercourse with the English—told him that this reasoning was certainly unassailable from the British point of view, and that England would fight for its recognition to the bitter end. Therefore, he considered the situation could only be met by an Anglo-German understanding. The failure of arriving at such a solution was probably caused—apart from personal motives—by the fact that in Germany the spirit of compromise was not the predominant one, but that its place was taken by an exaggerated opinion of the country’s own strength combined with a certain ignorance regarding foreign countries.
This mental attitude is typical of the two factions which were all-powerful in Germany at the time, viz., what might be called the Old Prussian aristocracy, and the representatives of the heavy industries. The common platform on which these two groups met was the policy to be pursued regarding customs tariffs, which, although it formed the basis of the economic greatness of Germany, also prepared the way for serious international conflicts. During the war these two groups were in charge of what was meant to be the political policy of the country, but which was, in fact, nothing but an inferior substitute for it.