Face to Face with Kaiserism

by James W. Gerard

In my first book, I touched on the change in the industrial system that will be brought about by the socialised buying and selling introduced first by Germany and which must be copied by the other nations if they desire to compete on equal terms with that country. In Germany for several years after the war at least, and perhaps as a permanent regulation, the purchase of all luxuries outside of Germany will be forbidden because of the desire to keep German gold and credits at home.

Germans have even stated to me that they do not fear in a trade way any prejudice created against them in other countries by their actions during this war. They say that a man always will buy where he can buy the cheapest, and that however much a merchant may hate the Germans after the war, if he can buy the goods he wants for his use from Germany at a cheaper rate than anywhere else, he will forget his prejudices in the interest of his pocketbook.

This is a question which each reader will have to solve for himself. Personally, I believe that in England, in France, and in America, too, if the war should last a long time, the prejudice against German trickery and brutality in war will become so great that many a merchant will prefer to lose a little money than deal with German sellers. However, the appeal of the pocketbook is always so earnest and so insistent that the Germans may be right in the view that financial considerations will weigh down the balance as against the prejudice engendered in this struggle. And if there comes a change of government in Germany, if the Hohenzollerns no longer control, or if in a liberalised Germany the ministers are responsible to a popular parliament, while kings sink to the political position of the kings of Great Britain or of Spain, then the commercial prejudice certainly will not last long. The boycott of Germany for fifty years suggested by the American Chamber of Commerce is a most powerful weapon.

And why, if wars are to continue after this one, should we contribute to German trade profits and consequently to German preparations for another war? The nations of the Allies must reckon, too, with the bitter, bitter hate felt for them by the whole German people—and only one who has been in Germany since the war can realise its intensity.

One great factor in forcing a change of government will be the desire of the individual German after the war to say that the government of his country existing then is not the government that ordered the shooting of Edith Cavell, the enslavement of the women and girls of northern France, the deportation of the Belgian workingmen, the horrors of the prison camps, the burning of Louvain and all the other countless barbarities and cruelties ordered by the German military commanders.

Imagine after this war in some distant island, perhaps, a Frenchman, an Englishman, an American, a Portuguese, an Italian all seated at the dining table of a little hotel. A German comes in and seeks to join them. Will he be treated on an equality? Will he be taken into their society? Or will he be treated as a leper and a pariah?

The Germans will wish to be in a position to say: "Why, gentlemen, I was against all these cruelties. I was against the sinking of the Lusitania, and the murder of its women and children. I was against the starving of Poland and the slaughter of the Armenians and the crucifixion of prisoners, and we Germans have thrown out the government that was responsible for these horrors."

Stronger than any other consideration will be the desire of the German to repudiate these acts which have made the Germany of to-day a Cain among the nations,—an outcast branded with the mark of shame.

The Russian author Bloch whom I have quoted, says, referring to the future war:

"Behind all conflicts of interest between nations statesmen must balance the chances of success of their nation, promised by the recourse to arms, against the terrible miseries of the victims caused by war as well as the social peril which can be the consequence of war.