The War After the War | Page 9

too, England is awake to the emergency. Typical of her plan of campaign is the projected British Trade Bank, which will provide facilities for oversea commercial development, and which will not conflict with the work ordinarily done by the joint-stock, colonial and British foreign banks. It will do for British foreign trade what the huge German combinations of capital did so long and so effectively for Teuton commerce. Furthermore, it will make a close corporation of finance and trade, with the government sitting in the board of directors and lending all the aid that imperial support can bestow.
The bank will be capitalised at fifty million dollars. It will not accept deposits subject to call at short notice, which means constant mobilisation of resources; it will open accounts only with those who propose to make use of its oversea machinery; it will specialise in credits for clients abroad, and it will become the centre of syndicate operations. One of its chief purposes, I might add, will be to enable the British manufacturer and exporter to assume profitably the long credits so much desired in foreign trade.
From the confidential report of its organisation let me quote one illuminating paragraph which is full of suggestion for American banking, for it shows the new idea of British preparedness for world business. Here it is:
"Nearly as important as the Board would be the General Staff. It is fair to assume that women will in the future take a considerable share in purely clerical work, and this fact will enable the institution to take fuller advantage of the qualifications of its male staff to push its affairs in every quarter of the globe. Youths should not be engaged without a language qualification, and after a few years' training they should be sent abroad. It could probably be arranged that associated banks abroad would agree to employ at each of their principal branches one of the Institution's clerks, not necessarily to remain there for an indefinite period, but to get a knowledge of the trade and characteristics of the country. Such clerks might in many cases sever their connection with the banks to which they were appointed and start in business on their own account. They would, however, probably look upon the institution as their 'Alma Mater,' Every endeavour should be made to promote esprit de corps; and where exceptional ability is developed it should be ungrudgingly rewarded. If industry is to be extended it is essential that British products should be pushed; and manufacturers, merchants and bankers must combine to push them. It is believed that this pushing could be assisted by the creation of a body of young business men in the way above described."
The scope and purpose of this British Trade Bank suggest another East India Company with all the possibilities of gold and glory which attended that romantic eighteenth-century enterprise. Perhaps another Clive or a second Hastings is somewhere in the making.
That the British Government proposes to follow the German lead and definitely go into business--thus reversing its tradition of aloofness from financial enterprise--is shown in the new British and Italian Corporation, formed to establish close economic relations between Britain and Italy. It starts a whole era in British banking, for it means the subsidising of a private undertaking out of national funds.
It embodies a meaning that goes deeper and travels much farther than this. Up to the outbreak of the great war Germany was the banker of Italy. Cities like Milan and Rome were almost completely in the grip of the Teutonic lender, and his country cashed in strong on this surest and hardest of all dominations. This was the one big reason why the Italian declaration of war against Germany was so long delayed. With this new banking corporation England not only supplants the German influence but forges the economic irons that will bind Italy to her.
The capital of the British and Italian Corporation is nominally only five million dollars. The government, however, agrees to contribute during each of the first ten years of its existence the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Though imperial stimulation of trade is one of its main objects, this institution is not without its larger political value. As this and many other similar enterprises show, politics and world trade, so far as Great Britain is concerned, will hereafter be closely interwoven.
Throughout all this British organisation runs the increasing purpose of an Empire Self-Contained. Whether that phase of the Paris Pact which calls for development and mobilisation of natural resources sees the light of reality or not, Britain is determined to take no chances for her own. She is scouring and searching the world for new fields and new supplies. She is planning to increase her tea and coffee growing in Ceylon and make