A GERMAN BUSINESS MIND.

BY SIR JOHN WOLFE BARRY, K.C.B.

Now that we are entering on the third year of the war so shamelessly brought about by Germany, the accompanying correspondence, commencing in August 1914, may interest your readers. It indicates the extreme rancour against our country of a leading and capable German manufacturer, not merely evoked by our declaration of war, but pre-existing for a long time and very carefully concealed from his English friends. It was to me in 1914 a curious lifting of the curtain, and indicates for our present guidance what will remain to be encountered by us in the economic struggle against the mercantile interests of Germany when the war ends.

The manufacturer’s letter is also interesting as showing clearly the anticipations held in Germany, when she declared war, of a speedy and highly successful result of the wicked and stealthy attack on her neighbours for which she had been so long preparing. It is astonishing moreover in the extraordinary ignorance displayed, on the part of a clever leader of German enterprise, as to the Constitution, resources, and temper of the British Empire, and it gives full vent to his hatred and contempt of France, Russia, and Japan.

This letter, printed second in the series, was addressed to an intimate friend of mine who was closely connected with engineering interests in Germany, and who had known the writer well for some years, having had important interests with him in business. My friend sent me the letter for my perusal, but did not disclose the name of the writer.

The third letter is an attempted reply on my part to the statements and misstatements of the German manufacturer, and requires no comment from me. My friend sent a copy of my letter to his German correspondent, but it evoked no reply.

Copies of both these letters were forwarded, anonymously, by my friend to a well-known English engineer long resident in Germany, who occupied a leading and acknowledged position in that country. He had been for many years closely in touch with very many members of his profession there, and was connected with numerous commercial interests.

As will be seen, he promptly identified the German manufacturer, and his note on the correspondence is placed first in the series in order to make clear the character and position of the writer of the amazing letter No. 2. He expresses the astonishment which he felt at its contents, remarking that the sentiments expressed in it had been carefully concealed in his interviews with him both before and after the outbreak of the war. The correspondence appears to me to give much food for thought in many various ways, and I may, with these few explanatory comments, let the letters speak for themselves.

Letter No. 1.

Extract from a letter received by Mr. A. B. of London from Mr. C. D., a gentleman long resident in Germany and unusually well acquainted with German commercial life:

Received February 1915.

‘I now see from whom the letter came. He is a friend of mine. I have had a good deal to do with him lately, also after the outbreak of war. Curiously, although knowing me to be an Englishman, he has never in the slightest manner expressed himself in a like sense to me. He has evidently written to you in a great state of excitement. Nevertheless I cannot understand his doing so nor his harbouring the thoughts expressed in his letter. He is a clever and clear-headed man and much respected. His conduct in the labour question is looked upon as exemplary. He has proceeded by quiet well-considered but energetic measures to get his working staff entirely free from labour and social-democratic influences. His workmen are all content with their conditions, and his works therefore free from labour troubles when these break out in other works. I am told that all works at —— have profited by his wise measures. I therefore can all the less understand his writing you such an incredible letter. How can men of his position be so blinded to the true facts?

‘The reply you sent[2] me sets this forth very clearly. I entirely concur in the contents and the opinions expressed in the same.’

Letter No. 2.

A letter written on August 29, 1914, to Mr. A. B. of London by a German business friend, and sent by Mr. A. B., in September 1914, to Sir John Wolfe Barry for his perusal:

‘The poisonous seed sown by your good King Edward VII. has sprung up. It is a well-known fact that the great aim of his life, to which he devoted all his energy, was to unite the whole world in one bond against Germany, to annihilate that hated nation.

‘His disciple Minister Grey has seized the opportunity of tightening the noose with which Germany is to be strangled. For ten years English diplomacy has worked for that end, to close up the ring round us. Now the die is irrevocably cast and Destiny goes its way. No one can say positively what the outcome will be, but one thing I do believe, and sixty-seven million Germans believe it with me, and that is that we shall be victorious.

‘We shall win because we are fighting for the right, for our national existence, for civilization. Without England’s intervention this war would have been inconceivable. In France, whom we sincerely pity, and whom this war will crush, one hears a united cry that she is ready for peace. In Russia it was only the aristocratic party that has forced on the war, and they will seize this opportunity to steal. That party of course owns the anti-German press, such as the Nowoje Wremja and other papers, which are financed by England. England alone was thirsting for war, and has pressed the other nations into war against us. For years she has seen how we have excelled her more and more in the industrial world. If people were but honest, they would know that the reason for our success lies in the fact that we are an industrious and hardworking folk. In England, on the other hand, there exists a widespread tendency to avoid work. We have no public holidays. Our working week averages fifty-eight hours. We Directors have no “week-ends,” we work in the factory on an average from fifty to sixty hours a week, and as a rule spend one or two nights and sometimes even all Sunday in the train in order to get work for our business. Moreover we understand how to adapt ourselves to all possible circumstances, while your people in their well-known arrogance, do not concern themselves with the requirements of other countries.

‘Because we have attained great prosperity by ability and hard work, the hatred and jealousy you bear us Germans has grown beyond all bounds. This embarrassing competition must be crushed so that you can go on in your comfortable decadent existence.

‘In order that a people, who appear particularly Christian, may attain this worthy goal, the barbarian hordes of the Slavs are mobilised against the champions of civilization, to whom the world owes so much. The natives in Africa are incited against us, and we are even betrayed in Japan. This last act has raised a storm of indignation in our country which would alarm you, had you any idea of it. England will certainly make terrible amends for this underhand deed. The hatred which is raging among Germany’s sixty-seven millions will avenge itself on England in a most fearful way. For a hundred years the fist of every German will be clenched whenever the word “England” is spoken.

‘I have had many experiences in my time, but never have I known anything like the satisfaction which prevailed throughout our country yesterday, when it first became known that your army of mercenaries had been under the fire of our noble reserves, and that we were in a position to shoot down the people who draw the sword for money. Your soldiers who oppose us in the field will yet learn something of the loathing which our army has for anything that is English. Our sailors look forward eagerly to the time when your fleet, of which you talk so much, appears in German waters. You may be quite sure that a large part of it will never again see the shores of England, even if we lose the whole of our navy. It is to be hoped that your fleet will at last summon up courage to attack us. If they come under the guns of Heligoland and Kuxhaven, your battleships will share the same fate as befell the forts at Liège and Namur.

‘In this war, which is the most shameful crime that has ever been committed against humanity, and which lies entirely at the door of English statesmen, we shall be triumphant. England will be shaken to her foundations. Mankind could not but lose its belief in right and justice, and more particularly in the Divine guidance of the universe, if a country, who in the most shameless way professes Christianity and yet allies herself with Asiatics and barbarians, were to be victorious.

‘Your newspapers, of which we still regularly receive copies, may overwhelm English readers with falsehoods about our army and its successes. Truth is going forward, and before fourteen days have passed our forces will be investing Paris. Belgium, whom you incited to oppose us, is cursing you. France, whom you likewise forced into war against us, will in future show perfidious Albion the door.

‘It is very sad that a country like England which has won for herself so much merit in the progress of mankind, and has produced so many able men, should abandon moral principles proved through the centuries and hand herself over to a band of unscrupulous men like Minister Grey. When one considers all the misery which this war, which is the most terrible the world has yet seen, has caused, it makes one shudder to imagine what sort of conscience the Councillors of the Czar, your Minister Grey and Minister Churchill must have.

‘Your great philosopher Carlyle has foreseen and indeed prophesied the moral decadence which always precedes political downfall. England has become the champion of a band of murderers who eleven years ago assassinated their King and his consort and have now killed a foreign prince. This nation who wishes to be so great conspires with the most barbaric race which the world has ever seen, the Russians, and is the brother-in-arms of the most treacherous, most contemptible, most ungrateful people that the earth holds, the Japanese.

‘I am sure America will endorse the general scorn and wrath towards your country. Australia will not be very grateful to England who wishes to make the position of the Japanese more assured. I will go so far as to maintain that the British world-empire will split off in all directions. The world’s history must be judged by subsequent generations, and the judgment of the world now passes sentence on your country’s action.

‘If I have offended you by what I have written, just consider I cannot do otherwise than say what is my opinion. My personal esteem for you is not altered by what is taking place.’

Letter No. 3.

From Sir John Wolfe Barry to Mr. A. B.:

October 4th, 1914.

‘I have read with profound interest and grief the copy of the letter of August 29th from your German friend. The rancour which it displays is beyond words. It is apparently useless to criticise its contents looking to the frame of mind of the writer, who, I think and fear, expresses the present general feeling in Germany of hatred and anger with our country. Many of his statements and arguments are however absolutely and fundamentally erroneous and are capable of complete refutation.

‘The poisoning of German thought in respect of Great Britain does not date from anything done by King Edward and still less from Sir Edward Grey or the present or former Ministry. It began long earlier in the antagonism between the military class and what may be termed the liberal aspirations of many thoughtful Germans when the Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick William, married our Princess Royal. Both were in sympathy with liberal ideas and they were violently opposed by Bismarck and the blood-and-iron school, while the youth of Germany were systematically taught by the professors and writers of Germany, under the encouragement of Bismarck and his school of thought, to hate and despise Great Britain. There is not and never has been a corresponding feeling here towards Germany.

‘Of course the two countries are rivals in trade and commerce, but that is no reason for rancorous hatred. We are keen rivals in trade with the United States and other countries, but such rivalries have not engendered any other feelings than that each country should do its best honourably to succeed in competition. It must never be forgotten in this connection that in England and in our colonies Germans, though keeping a strict barrier of tariffs themselves, have had absolute freedom in competition, that they have availed themselves of it and have made huge profits under our Free Trade system. Thus the rancour of Germany against Great Britain must be sought for in other directions, and it cannot be truthfully put down to trade rivalry.

‘The cause is in fact to be found in the Welt Politik, the jealousy of Germany of British world power and in the aspirations of crushing Great Britain by force of arms. This has been the persistent and avowed policy of the Kaiser and the Junker class.

‘The idea was to fight France and Russia to a finish and then concentrate all forces against England (and parenthetically against Belgium) and to destroy the British Empire. The present extreme and violent hatred on the part of Germany is due to the probability of the failure of that deep-laid scheme in consequence of England supporting her Allies, and refusing to break her pledged word to Belgium. It may be also caused by the feeling which must be somewhere embedded in German thought, that Germany has behaved dishonourably and scandalously to Belgium, whose neutrality she most solemnly guaranteed.

‘If one looks back on the history of the last twenty-five years, or thereabouts, one sees Bismarck threatening an unprovoked war with France, and only withdrawing under the threat of the opposition of Russia and Great Britain. This proposed attack on France by Bismarck was a most shameful episode, for France’s only offence was her existence and recuperative power after her disasters in 1870. Then came the Emperor’s policy in our South African War, when, if he could have done so, he would have arrayed Europe against this country, but ended only in having lured Kruger to ruin. Then came the “mailed fist” in China, the seizure of Tsing-tau, and Germany’s efforts to crush Japan after the Russo-Japanese war. The demonstrations at Tangiers and Agadir occurred soon afterwards, with more threats of an European war. Afterwards came the annexation of Bosnia by Austria backed by Germany and the insults hurled at Russia by Germany in “shining armour.”

‘It is these things and others of a similar nature when the German “sabre has been rattled” constantly in the face of Europe, that demonstrated that Germany was the enemy of peace, and which, crowned by the breach of the Treaty of Belgium, showed to the Allies that no treaty would hold Germany, and that her aspirations and lust for world power were Napoleonic. Lastly the Allies knew that Germany had resolved on war and was making a catspaw of Austria by preventing her from coming to an agreement with Servia and Russia.

‘I have said nothing about the systematic building of the German navy. It was within her rights as a Sovereign Power, but none the less the avowed object was to seize the “Trident of the Seas” and to attack Great Britain. It was obviously intended to attack our coasts, so as to enable an invasion of this country to be possible, and to seize the colonies of Great Britain and France.

‘Germany was utterly deceived by her diplomatists about England, which was troubled with threats of civil war and by trade disputes, and they never thought that we would stand up for Belgium and fight now rather than later. It is chagrin at the miscalculation, combined with the effects of our maritime power, which has produced the outburst of hatred against us. Commercial rivalry has no real basis for hatred, and as for the question of a “place in the sun,” Germany has large and advantageous colonial possessions but can do but little with those which she owns, and has preferred to compete with us in our colonies as she has done so long and so successfully.

‘All this history of German jealousy, hatred and designs is very sad, and I do not suppose that your German friend, obsessed as he is, would listen to any facts or arguments. But since I began to write, somewhat hurriedly, to you I have been led on to write more than I intended to try to deal with. I do not imagine that he has seen or would be allowed to see the statement of the British case in the White Paper, which I understand will be further elaborated in a new paper to be published next Tuesday.

‘Have you answered your friend’s letter, or have you looked upon it as hopeless to do so? In the temper in which he wrote there was nothing visible but fighting to a finish.

‘Yours very sincerely, ‘(Signed) J. Wolfe Barry.

‘P.S.—I suppose you have not had another letter? It would be interesting to see one of a later date than August 29th.

‘J. W. B.’

N.B.—A copy of Sir John Wolfe Barry’s letter was sent by Mr. A. B. to his German business friend, but no reply was attempted and the correspondence then ceased.

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