ts and profits of the backward countries would suffice to create
an international antagonism even if no other economic forces
contributed to this result. Closely though not obviously bound to this
struggle for colonies, however, is an equally intense struggle among
the industrial nations to force their way economically into each
other's home territory. Germany, it is alleged, forces her way
industrially into France, Switzerland, Italy, Belgium and Holland. She
penetrates these countries economically, crushes their industries,
forces upon them her own industrial products, extracts from them the
profits which should go to their own manufacturers. Industrially,
commercially, financially she seeks to rule Italy and Belgium as Great
Britain rules the Argentine or Canada. She holds these countries, so
it is claimed, in industrial non-age. It is all a quiet economic
infiltration, a matter of buying and selling and of lawful contracts,
but it is none the less war. "War is war," admits Prof. Maurice
Milloud, a student of this phenomenon of German industrial expansion,
"but make no mistake that it is war."[1]

Within the last few years there have appeared numerous books by French,
Swiss, Belgian and Italian[2] {117} publicists attacking the policy by
which Germany prior to the war secured a partial control of her
neighbouring markets. With the merits of this controversy and with the
morality or immorality of the procedure, we need not concern ourselves.
To us the only point of interest is the nature of the economic forces
leading to such a conflict and the effect of this conflict in creating
national animosity and in inciting to war.

All the industrial nations export to one another as well as to the
agricultural countries. Why, then, is Germany's course so bitterly
resented?

At first glance one might suppose that the chief objection to this
German enterprise lay in its ruthlessness and economic terrorism. A
French manufacturer of formic acid is crushed outright by a sudden
price reduction; a Swiss or Italian manufacturer is ruined by being
spied upon by his own employes in the pay of a German competitor. But
the main objection to the German competition seems to be its
formidableness. Germany exports not only wares but men, and in all the
neighbouring countries are to be found German chemists, engineers,
business men and clerks. It is claimed that these pioneers hold
together, advance together, maintain the cult