The War After the War | Page 3

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. He pitched his tents upon debatable trade lands. His rivals called it economic penetration, because he invariably took root. For him it was merely good business.
Then England suddenly realised that Germany had left her behind in the race for international commerce. Indifference lay at the root of this backsliding. It was easier and cheaper to buy the German-made product and reship it than to produce the same article at home. Sloth hung like a chain on English energy. What did it matter? No forest of bayonets hemmed her in; she was still Mistress of the Seas.
Meantime Germany dripped with efficiency and ached with expansion. Her amazing teamwork between state and business, stimulated by an interested finance, drove her on to a place in the sun. The shadows seemed far away when the great war crashed into civilisation. Then England woke to the folly of her blindness. The mystery of coal-tar products was shut up in a German laboratory; the secrets of tungsten, necessary to the toughest steel, were imprisoned in a Teutonic mill; and so on down a long list of products vital to industry and defence.
Even those early and tragic reverses of the war did not stir the stolid British bulk. Men fought for a chance to fight; restriction still oppressed factory output. Red tape vied with tradition to block the path of military and industrial preparation.
Then the Lion stirred; the sloth fell away; men and munitions were enlisted; the strong hand was put on labour tyranny; conscription succeeded the haphazard voluntary system. Britain got busy and she has buzzed ever since.
When the kingdom had become a huge arsenal; when the old sex differences vanished under the touchstone of a common peril; when the first khaki host swept to its place in the battle line, and the grey fleets were once more queens of the seas, England turned to the task of commercial rebuilding, once neglected, but thenceforth to be part and parcel of British purpose.
Animating this purpose, stirring it like a vast emotion, was the New Battle Cry of Empire--the kindling Creed of United Dominions, consecrated to the economic mastery of the world.
But this revival was not an overnight performance. If you know England you also know that it takes a colossal jolt to stir the British mind. The war had been in full swing for over a year and the countryside was an armed camp before the realisation of what might happen commercially after the war soaked into the average islander's consciousness.
Under the impassioned eloquence of Lloyd George the munition workers had been marshalled into an inspired working host; with the magic of Kitchener's name, the greatest of all voluntary armies came into being. But it remained for Hughes, of Australia, to point out the fresh path for the feet of the race.
Who is Hughes, of Australia? You need not ask in England, for the story of his advent, the record of his astounding triumph, the thrilling message that he left implanted in the British breast, constitute one of the miracles of a war that is one long succession of dramatic episodes. This Colonial Prime Minister arrived unknown: he left a popular hero.
Thanks to him, Australia was prepared for war; and when the Mother Lioness sent out the world call to her cubs beyond the seas there was swift response from the men of bush and range. The world knows what the Anzacs did in the Dardanelles; how they registered a monster heroism on the rocky heights of Gallipoli; gave a new glory to British arms.
England rang with their achievements. What could she do to pay tribute to their courage? Hughes was their national leader and spokesman; so the Political Powers That Be said:
"Let us invite the Premier to sit in the councils of the empire and advise us about our future trade policy."
Already Hughes had declared trade war on Germany in Australia. Under his leadership every German had been banished from commonwealth business; by a special act of Parliament the complete and well-nigh war-proof Teutonic control of the famous Broken Hill metal fields had been annulled. He